announced that the Committee on Standing Rules and Orders had appointed the following members to serve on the Select Committee on the South African Nationality and Flag Bill, viz., The Prime Minister, the Minister of the Interior, the Minister of Justice, the Minister of Labour, Messrs. Barlow, Close, J. H. Conradie. Duncan, Hugo, Kentridge, Krige, Robinson, Rood, Gen. Smuts and Sir Thomas Watt.

To enable me to discuss the matter of the Minister’s policy with regard to one of the officials of the Land Department, I move—

Make it £1.

Very well, I will reduce it to £1. The case to which I wish to draw the attention of the House is that of land inspector Allin. Mr. Allin was a land inspector in the Lands Department. He had been in the service for eight years, and I think his salary was £640. However, that is not the point. I want to make it clear that Mr. Allin was not a permanent official; he was a temporary official, but he had been in the service for eight years, and he was one of the most trusted officials in the Lands Department, and I know of no case where an official of such high standing and responsibility has been dismissed under the circumstances that I will disclose. I wish to say quite frankly that had the Minister taken advantage of the law as it stands, and given him a month’s notice, he would have been entitled to do so. If he had done that, I would have said it was harsh treatment, but the Minister had remained within the letter of the law, but the way in which Mr. Allin was actually got rid of is a far different one. He was one of the most respected citizens of Pretoria. I remember in my time whenever I wanted any responsible work done, Mr. Allin was almost invariably the man recommended by the Department as the best man for the work. He had a very important sphere of the Lands Department’s work under him. In March, 1925, Mr. Allin received the following letter from the Secretary for Lands—

To that Mr. Allin, the moment he got this letter, sent a telegram as follows—

The next step in this lamentable history was this. Mr. Allin was not given the names of the complainants but the next step was a minute to the Governor-General—

Following on that, Mr. Allin got the following letter from the Lands Department—

This notice was sent him. The House will notice that Mr. Allin was given no inkling as to the names of the people who had made this accusation. The next step is a telegram he received on the 6th May, 1925, that the inquiry would be held at Derby on the 13th instant. Nothing more. He does not know who he is going to meet, and he is given barely six days to go to an inquiry in which his honour and his future are deeply involved, and he is not told who has lodged the complaint against him. He does not know how many people are involved, but he knows he is accused of making a certain statement. He has no option but to travel to Derby and attend this court of inquiry where he learns for the first time who his accusers are. He had to face the charge wholly unprepared and under the circumstances was unable to produce any witnesses—how could he produce any witnesses to give evidence of a negative character?

But he did.

He had to scramble them together hurriedly and to get a few people to testify to his character. At this court of inquiry the complainants or his traducers were Rossouw, and three Groblers belonging to the same family. All declared that Allin had made this statement to certain individual settlers. Under the circumstances, I am not blaming the court for coming to the decision it did. I blame the Minister, or whoever was responsible for holding the inquiry, and not giving Allin the necessary time.

He asked for a postponement.

The court admits that Mr. Allin was in a nervous state, and that he did not know the procedure. He was not told who had made the statement and to whom the statement was made.

Who demanded the inquiry?

He did. Up to this stage, at any rate, I can quite see that the court, having four sworn testimonies, all four swearing that Allin had made this statement, and having Allin’s unsupported testimony to contradict it, could come to no other decision than the one it did come to. The court accordingly issued its verdict, to the effect that Allin had made this statement, and fined him £25; and naturally he was dismissed from the service. So far one can understand, and so far no gross injury has been done, or at any rate there had been no great irregularity, or travesty of justice. But after 8 years’ of service and holding a responsible position for many years, he was ignominiously dismissed from the service and he had to pay his own expenses.

He was not fined.

He may not have paid the fine, but the decision of the court was to find him guilty and to fine him £25. I do not know who had the power to remit the fine. As far as I know, Mr. Burger, National party secretary, Pietersburg, was given his position.

No, Mr. Burger was one of the inspectors you appointed.

I merely mention this by the way, but it is not a factor in the matter. Derby is a settlement in which the settlers almost exclusively belong to the National party.

How do you know that?

I am glad to testify that the bulk of the men realized that an honest man has been unfairly treated, and declarations and letters from them began to reach the Lands Department. On the 19th of April, 1926, one Buitendag started the work of reparation, and he wrote a letter in which he declared that the statement made by these three Groblers—

He did not write to the Lands Department; you are making a mistake.

These letters were handed to the Lands Department from whose files I got them. The letter states that the statement made by these three Groblers could not be correct, and he entered into details, pointing out that the elder Grobler was in the bushveld when Allin was alleged to have made this statement, and the other two Groblers had asked him to eject Allin from his post. Rossouw writes courageously on the 27th of April, and owns and admits freely that he had committed perjury; so that the movement was gradually gathering momentum. It speaks for the morale of the men at Derby that they desired to clear Allin. There was an affidavit by Buitendag in which he says—

G. Hammon swears that Grobler, senior, is a notoriously bad character, and no one can rely on his word. Mrs. Scheepers swears that Grobler is a noted bad character. Another statement is to the effect that Grobler would get Allin dismissed as soon as the Nationalists came in. This man states—

Another swears that Grobler is a dangerous and disagreeable man; and still another, that one of Grobler’s sons was away when Allin made his tour of inspection. One Rothman swears that Rossouw was away at the time. Another man said the same. The Minister took the fair and right step in appointing another commission, but it would have been far better if he had appointed another commissioner at the same time, because it is always difficult for a commissioner to have to re-try his own case and upset his own decision. The Minister, however, did the right thing in the wrong way, and reappointed Mr. Hill to hold another inquiry. By this time Mr. Allin had been notified as to the charge against him and was able to obtain legal representation. The court after sifting the evidence very carefully, gave the following finding—

I would like to tell the House how this injustice was remedied. Mr. Allin was reasonably entitled to expect that he would be reinstated in the service, if not in his own position, but one could understand that that would be filled as some fifteen months had elapsed between the making of the charge and the finding of the second commission. After Mr. Hill had issued his second finding; naturally Mr. Allin immediately applied for reinstatement in his old post or in a similar post, and also for assistance towards defraying the heavy legal expenses which he had been forced to incur as a result of the charges made against him. He was very high up in the service drawing, I think, £640 a year by the time he was dismissed. He was looked up to by the entire department—that I can testify to from my own knowledge. When he applied for reinstatement he was informed that a temporary sanitary inspectorship was vacant on the Lichtenburg alluvial fields at a salary of 12s per day. Is that the way to treat a respected official of the State who has given many years of service? He is offered a sanitary inspector’s daily paid post on the Lichtenburg alluvial field at 12s. a day, a man with a wife and family who had been drawing £600 a year and one of the most respected men in the service. After being dismissed with contumely and with a stain on his character, when the Reparation Court asked for and confidently expected from the Minister he would be justly treated, he is offered a sanitary inspector’s post on the alluvial diggings. Mr. Allin said very naturally that he could not accept that at 12s. per working day, which amounted to £198 a year or less. The Minister having got his refusal, offers him a mining constable’s place at Klerksdorp, also situated on the Lichtenburg fields, at a salary of £192 per annum to start with. That is the manner in which the Minister tried to undo this gross injustice to an official of the State. It says in the letter that the scale of salary is £192 going up by £12 per annum to £240, and then by £15 per annum, until it ultimately reaches £300. That is the nett result of eight years faithful service, and that is the way the Minister proposed to undo the injustice to Mr. Allin. Mr. Allin had been practically starving for eighteen months—out of work and labouring under this cloud—and he refused this also. Then the Minister offered him 12s. a day in the Lands Department, and as this unfortunate official was starving he was compelled to accept that, but he wrote continually to the Minister asking him to do substantial justice. If you reinstate a man in a subordinate job like that the stigma must still be there, and everybody who knew him would say “There is Allin, who was head upstairs, now only a clerk.”

He was not head of any department.

He was the premier land inspector and was looked upon as the soundest land inspector in the service. Everyone must have realized he was a man who had come down from a higher state, and they must have looked upon him as being under a cloud. I do not think that the court of inquiry, when it made that recommendation congratulating the Minister on giving them a chance of undoing an injustice, contemplated that the reparation would be of that nature. On the 29th November, 1926, Allin wrote to the Minister respectfully submitting that he was entitled to better treatment, and the refunding of travelling expenses, and the Minister replied, callously as I thought, on the 24th December, drawing his attention to the fact that he was charged with having made this statement with regard to settlers and voting for the National party, and that he had been given the benefit of the doubt. It was implying that he had only been given the benefit of the doubt, so why should he ask for better treatment. These words were put in inverted commas to emphasize them—

Surely the Minister by that indicated that he still thought him guilty, and that he did not exonerate him. He further said in that letter—

We are talking about the morality of the thing, and the influence and effect on the civil service of this treatment, and I put it to the Minister, I have always found him a fair-minded man, whether, in his heart of hearts, he thinks Mr. Allin has had a fair deal. Then Minister then goes on to say—

But surely that would only be a beginning.

If the Minister tells me that I will walk over and shake hands with him; if he said it was only a beginning of the process of reparation

I had nothing else to give him at the time. It was the best I could do.

In December, 1926, after Mr. Allin had been labouring under this intolerable injustice, and after his wife and family had been starving for nearly two years, and he is entitled to infer from the Minister’s letter that he was still labouring under the charge and was merely given the benefit of the doubt, and after refusing the job that was offered to him, he was told he was lacking in gratitude, then wrote the Minister a letter couched in very strong terms.

A very impertinent letter.

So would you have been impertinent if your wife and family had been starving for two years. When I tabled a question a few months ago on this matter, the Minister’s answer was—

I ask any fair-minded man in the House whether it is fair on the part of the Minister to goad a man into a strong letter after this intolerable injustice—

I, goad him into it? Good gracious!

I think so, when a man has been two years on the streets, unjustly, and when he is told after being cleared by the court that he is still merely a man who had the benefit of the doubt, and is told—

If that is not intolerable provocation, if that is not goading a man into an outburst, then I can only say that the man who would not be goaded by such a letter would be a very tame creature indeed. I ask the Minister whether it is fair to use that as an argument not to reinstate him. The Minister has made it clear over and over again to Allin that he will not be reinstated, and now, as an afterthought, he says—

Mr. Allin in his letter says—

The men who got him into this predicament, the men who caused him to be thrown out on the streets, and caused his wife and children to starve, have admitted perjury, and still they are on the Government settlement, and he is walking about with this slur on his reputation, and I ask the Minister again whether it is fair to come to this House and say—

Read the last part of the letter. He says that I trumped up the charge against him.

I admit that it was a strong letter. I took out what I thought was the strongest part of it. I admit that coming from an official to a minister it is very strong language.

He went further and said that the Minister had trumped up the charge against him.

I remember it was very strong, and I do not want to tone down the matter in any way. I have not the whole letter by me just now. Let me make this clear. However strong the language may have been, I hold that the man has been goaded by this intolerable wrong. The Minister time after time says—

No, no.

Here is a man who has been treated with gross unfairness, and I say it with all the more regret because I have always found the Minister of Lands to be a very fair-minded man.

I was in this case.

I do not think that in this case the Minister can say he was fair. I do implore the Minister not to get up in this House and say—

I hold that that letter was pardonable and excusable under the circumstances. [Time limit.]

I move—

I am sorry, I cannot allow any further time, I am not permitted to do so.

I do not know whether Ministers read the Auditor-General’s reports or not, and, if they do, whether they are affected by those reports. I want to draw the Committee’s attention to one or two little remarks in the Auditor-General’s last report. The first is that the expenditure for 1925-’26 shows an increase of £41,396 as compared with 1924-’25 in the Department of Lands. A little lower down we find that the permanent staff in 1925-’26 was 34 more than in the previous year. Of course, that accounts largely for the increased expenditure, but the Minister will be good enough, perhaps, to tell us who controls these appointments. Will the Minister explain who creates the vacancies?

You mean new posts?

Call it by any name you like. I want to know who fills these appointments, who is responsible for the appointment of a particular person, especially these 34 who have been incorporated in the public service. We know that the civil service is already overstaffed. I think the proportion of civil servants is one to every seven of the civilians of this country. For every four voters we have got in the country, there is one civil servant.

It was so when your party was in power.

In view of that, I am going to draw attention to another statement in the Auditor-General’s report on the following page, in which he talks about “fruitless expenditure”. I want to show how little control is exercised in the appointments and the shifting of people from one post to another. There was a man called the Water Bailiff at Potchefstroom who was in receipt of a salary of £500 per annum, plus a local allowance of £31. In November, 1924, he received a letter from the chief clerk of the Lands Department that he was to go to Hartebeestpoort. I bring this case forward, because the people outside view with fear and alarm the increase in taxation which is piled upon them year after year. I am endeavouring to show a waste of money.

Quite right, I will explain that case.

It was a small amount, but if we would only look after the small amounts, the large ones would take care of themselves, and I think it is my bounden duty to draw attention to this waste of money. Now this Water Bailiff was ordered by the chief clerk of the Lands Department to proceed to Haartebeestpoort where he was to fill another appointment. He should have proceeded there on 1st January, 1925, but he was instructed subsequently that he should go there at the beginning of March. He went there on the 3rd March, only to be told by the superintendent there that he was not required because that particular work had been taken over by the Labour Department from 1st January. Now comes the point. What right had the chief clerk to tell this man to go to Hartebeestpoort? The result of it was that the country was put to an expenditure of £118 5s. 5d. There is somebody to blame. What I want to know is, who is authorized to make these transfers and these appointments? Apparently there has been a clash.

I would like to finish what I was saying about Mr. Allin. The Minister has very fairly given me the full text of the letter about which he was complaining, the letter that he received from Mr. Allin. In this Mr. Allin says—

He does not say that the Minister or the Government trumped up a charge against him—

Surely that is correct? He proceeds—

Surely that is stretching the terms of this letter. The Minister can take it from me that neither Mr. Allin or anyone going through these papers could possibly suspect the Minister of having trumped up this charge or think that Mr. Allin was accusing him of doing so. He says—

I repeat that no one can read into this letter that he is charging the Minister with trumping up a charge—

I have been in close touch with Mr. Allin for months over this case. He feels this indignity to his very soul. There is nothing in this letter bearing out the Minister’s contention that Mr. Allin thinks the Minister went and suborned the perjurers. What Mr. Allin said—it is a strong statement but justified—is—

The Minister must be fair over this. If Mr. Allin had said the Minister of Lands had suborned these people in Rustenburg to commit perjury, then I would say put him out, but he never said that or intended that, and he never implied it. I hope the Minister will take my word.

What is the meaning of the words “trumped up”?

He says you have not reinstated him in order to be able to put a political supporter in his place. Does the Minister really mean that Allin is saying that the Minister went and suborned perjury?

Yes, that I instructed people to trump up a charge against him.

No.

No, what Mr. Allin says is that you have taken advantage of not reinstating him in order to put a political supporter into the vacancy. That is a strong statement, but excusable in the circumstances. There is nothing in this letter that bears out the Minister’s interpretation. If Mr. Allin had ever meant that, the Minister would have been fully justified.

I cannot read anything else into it.

If the Minister thought that, then I still do not understand why he did not reinstate him before, because this letter is written two years after the event and was only written when this poor man was goaded into making this reply. The only thing he had got from the Minister was a callous letter saying—

The Minister cannot read into it more than the strong statement by Mr. Allin that you have refused to reinstate him because you want to put one of your own supporters into the job.

It is possible he did not realize his language. It seems to me the construction of the Minister is very fair.

Mr. Allin is not perhaps a literary man and he was labouring under the stress of excitement. He is talking of the refusal to reinstate him.

He says in effect you should rather have followed the course of giving him notice than to “have trumped up a charge against me.”

No.

No, if Mr. Allin had said: “You, the Minister, have trumped up a charge against me” naturally no Minister would have taken him back. Mr. Allin never said that and he does not say so in his letter.

He says a charge was trumped up against him on false evidence and this was done to create a vacancy for a political supporter.

He says the charge was trumped up against him. So it was. He says false evidence has been given. So it was. But he does not say the Minister trumped up the charge. It would not be fair to take advantage of a man whose style is not literary and who was labouring under strong emotion to say he intended something he did not intend. If the Minister is under the impression that Allin implied that, I am sure Allin will say to the Minister, “I never intended anything of the sort.” And then I think we can leave the matter as it is and I am sure Mr. Allin can rely upon the Minister for fair treatment. That being the case, I am prepared to leave the matter where it is.

I felt very much grieved about this matter, because I did my utmost to help Mr. Allin. I received these declarations in Cape Town. I showed them to the Secretary of Lands at once. He said that if Mr. Allin had been a permanent official he should be reported at once to the Public Service Commission, but as he was not a permanent official there should be an inquiry. I said—

I would not have done anything more. He did not make an explanation, but denied the statements and demanded a full public inquiry. I could not do anything else. At the public inquiry he was found guilty and there was no course open to me but to dismiss him. But before doing so I said to the Secretary that I did not want to throw him with his wife and children on the street, and I wanted him to try and find a job for him in some other department. He approached the Labour department but that fell through, and I said then that we must give him notice. We gave him notice and there the thing ended. He came to me and said—

Apart from any question of reinstatement, the whole question was to clear his name. I thought it was right he should have the chance of clearing his name, and I referred the matter to the law advisers. They stated I should submit these papers to the commissioner, Mr. Hill. Here is the letter—

I sent these to Mr. Hill. He said he could not judge now, and on that he was reappointed by me in order to clear Allin’s name. I thought I was doing a great deal. When the commissioner’s finding was that Allin should receive the benefit of the doubt, we paid him his full allowances; but the whole trouble was this, that from that very moment Allin thought and acted as if he were in the position to demand that he should be reinstated in his former position. I could not do that because no position was open. He took up a very aggressive attitude. I first wanted to give him another job, then I reopened the inquiry and then he took up the attitude—

No Minister would stand that. I am not going to be intimidated by anyone. I offered him one thing after another. The job he did accept was accepted with a very bad grace, to say the least of it.

Can you wonder at it?

I am not bound to give him an inspectorship at once if I have not got it.

But you could have told him to hang on until you had something better for him.

He wrote me this impertinent letter. He might not have meant it, but this is the construction which I put on it, and I think everybody else would put on it. He said distinctly—

Under those circumstances, I said that Mr. Allin can do whatever he likes, I am not going to re-appoint him. I always try to treat all my officials fairly; you can go to my department and ask all my officials. I have nothing to do with their political views; but when that man makes that abominable charge against me I said I was not going any further. In reply to the hon. member for Von Brandis (Mr. Nathan), I may say that I am also sorry about the matter he refers to, but will tell him how it happened. At the time I took over office the whole Hartebeestpoort was to be taken over as a probationary scheme, and my predecessor had taken preliminary steps to have it settled under the Land Settlement Act. We wanted a very competent water bailiff because it is a complicated system. They advised that Mr. Owen, although he had not passed his examination, was a very competent man, and should be transferred to take charge of that whole area that was done. Even to-day if I have an important job, I will go to Mr. Owen because he is a very able man. Shortly after this the left bank was taken over by the Labour Department, and only the right bank would be under the Lands Department. It was found that it would not be necessary to have Mr. Owen there, because it was a much smaller job. We found in the Potchefstroom district things were getting very complicated, and Mr. Owen is the one man who knows it.

Within 24 hours of his arrival?

You are wrong there. I decided to transfer him back to Potchefstroom, and I am not sorry I did so. He is still there, and has done excellent work. At Hartebeestpoort a man was appointed at a small salary, and nothing like what Mr. Owen gets. With regard to what the hon. member for Capetown (Central) (Mr. Jagger) has said, I may say that the increase was due solely to the Act of 1925. Under Section 11 far more use was made of the Act than formerly. I have had a comparison made, and it shows that whereas in 1923-24 there were only 1,100 applications, in 1925-26 there were 4,800 applications under the new Act, so that has increased the work vastly under the department. But, apart from that, under the new Act settlers have the right of consolidating their arrears; all that has involved a vast amount of work, so that the ordinary staff could not cope with it. If my hon. friend goes to my department he will find that they work, not eight hours a day but sometimes up to 14 and 15 hours a day, and some will drop one of these days. We all have to work very hard there. That is why these new posts were created. You apply to the Public service Commission, and if they find that the head of the department is right, they grant the necessary staff.

The Minister says that Mr. Allin was truculent and insisted that he had a right to be reinstated. The Minister says he was truculent and impertinent from the start. Immediately after the court of inquiry Mr. Allin, on the 29th November, 1926, wrote to the Minister—and that is his truculence to the Minister—

and then he gives the record of his service, and the letter goes on to say—

Then, in a most respectful, humble tone, he says—

Is that truculent?

No, that is not the letter.

That is followed by the callous letter which he received. “I submit” is a most respectful and courteous way of doing it. The Minister jumps down his throat and says—

Of the two, I think the Minister was considerably more truculent than Allin. After that the thing went on in crescendo. The Minister still, to my regret, insists that Allin accuses him of having instigated the whole thing. On the very day Allin wrote the letter to the Minister he wrote a letter to the Secretary of Lands, and if you read the two letters together you will realize it could not possibly be Allin’s intention to make that imputation. Largely it is the same in contents as the letter to the Minister, except for the phraseology. He said—

He makes strong charges against the Minister, but never was it his intention to charge the Minister with instigation. He goes on to say—

He does not say that the Minister instigated these perjurers. He goes on to say, these perjurers—

What degradation? I did not degrade him.

This is beside the point. I am showing that Allin in no way intended to indicate that the Minister was at the bottom of the whole vile business. However you may twist that letter, he never meant to indicate that.

It appears in the original charge of the Minister putting a political supporter in his place.

That is only what one might expect of the hon. member for Namaqualand (Mr. Mostert). Here is the chief accuser, who admits having committed perjury, and the court has exonerated Allin, and the hon. member says that he is still guilty. The Minister has never attempted to stand on the ground that Allin was guilty of what he had been charged. The Minister says Allin was impertinent to him, and that was why he discharged him. It is an ex post facto charge against Allin. If my wife and family were put in these straits, and this humiliation was put on me, I would have been goaded into something similar. I do not think any man can take that amiss. The Minister makes a new charge, that Allin charges him with trumping up this charge. That was never done. I am exceedingly sorry that a man who in essence was always fair-minded has not been in essence fair to Mr. Allin, and it cannot do the esprit de corps in any service good when an official has this treatment meted out to him. My object was to vindicate an honest man’s reputation, in the first place, and in the second place, I had fondly hoped that the Minister of Lands would admit that Mr. Allin had hard measure meted out to him. I would gladly have left it in the Minister’s hands to see that Mr. Allin got substantial reparation. I make that last appeal to the Minister, that he will give us an assurance to reopen the matter, as far as in his power lies, and to grant Mr. Allin reparation.

We must, in the first place, look to the competency of irrigation or land inspectors, and a man, if he is competent, must not talk politics because there are people of all parties on a settlement. This Government, and I hope the late Government also, brought men of all parties on to the settlements, and the inspectors there must not occupy themselves with political talk. A man who writes such a letter shows that he is well versed in politics. We must not have political agents on the settlements, but people who work and show the settlers how to make a success of things. They must point out to the settlers that the Government have treated them well by writing off large sums and that they must now do their best to make a success of things.

And to vote right.

That has nothing to do with it. I would rather have a good Sap on the land than another who is not good. The question what a man’s political views are makes no difference provided he is a success. The Government write off large sums due from the taxpayers on the settlements and the settlers ought to appreciate it and the inspectors ought to urge them to do their duty. This was, moreover, only a temporary appointment. There are people in the department who have held a temporary appointment for 20 years, and they are just the ones in the way of the permanent men. The temporary men earn three or four times as much as the permanent officials, and the Government ought to know that it must now consider the permanent staff. We are a young country and from time to time it was necessary to import people for temporary positions, but to-day we ought to think of the sons of the soil and not to put the temporary officials in their road.

That man was a son of the soil.

But a temporary official and a competent man does his work and does not discuss political small talk. It is against the best interests of the settlers, and I hope the Minister will not put him on a settlement again. We must have inspectors who help the people on, not those who talk politics.

I am sure the Minister of Lands will appreciate that there is no desire to make political capital out of this incident, but is simply a desire to have soma reparation made to a man who deserves it, and I am sure the Minister will, on reconsideration, come to the conclusion that something more should be done for this unfortunate individual. The Minister is not a man to dwell on an indiscreetly written letter. Obviously, a man who has suffered as this man has, cannot approach the subject in an absolutely impartial manner, or put his thoughts on paper in as discreet a manner as was advisable. It was not through the man’s fault but through the efforts of his enemies that he got into this position, and it is most unfair to penalize him, even if he were not very discreet in his communication to the Minister. Did the Minister take any step towards bringing these perjurers to the notice of the Minister of Justice?

To the Attorney-General.

I am very glad to hear it We do not wish to score off the Minister at all; in fact, I rose for the purpose of praising him. I am asked by the Addo Settlers’ Association to bring to the notice of the Government their keen appreciation of the Government’s sympathetic administration. The Minister has undoubtedly in every way taken a sympathetic and entirely proper attitude towards these settlers, and I am very glad to be able to bear my testimony to his action. I hope, however, the Minister will not consider that his work in regard to that settlement is finished. The Minister must seriously take in hand the curtailment of the irrigated areas at Sundays River. There are two classes concerned—the irrigators and the land settlers, and the Minister must weigh the balance very carefully between these conflicting interests. Those who have land to sell are anxious to dispose of it, while those who have already bought land are anxious to have sufficient water to irrigate their holdings. There are only nine inches per acre per annum of water available from Lake Mentz, and that only enables one-third of the area under irrigation to be worked in a satisfactory manner. When we consider the price paid by the settlers and the heavy rates they have to pay, it is obvious that if there is any further selling and the placing of more land under irrigation, the quantity of water will be reduced, and it will be impossible for any of the irrigators to make a decent living. The settlers must have confidence that if they plant citrus trees they will have sufficient water to keep them going and bearing to their full capacity. I hope the Minister will see that the land placed under irrigation is within the safe limits of the available water supply. The Minister should expedite the visit of the Irrigation Commission to this settlement.

Put that point to the Minister of Agriculture.

I hope the Minister will not spoil his administration by refusing a most elementary act of justice to this unfortunate man, Allin. If the Minister assures us that he will give this matter his earnest and sympathetic consideration that will satisfy this side of the House.

Are any steps taken to look after Government holdings which are surrendered or abandoned by settlers? From my experience when a holding is surrendered it is left uncared for until it is reallotted. I have seen surrendered holdings with the buildings and fences falling down and the land overgrown with burrweed, just because no one is made responsible for their preservation. I have an instance of a settler who was transferred from a settlement in the Dundee district to my district—Klip River. He inspected the holding in May, 1926, and found it very much overgrown with grass, as the result of which the existence of burrweed escaped his notice. He applied for the holding, and in the following October was informed that it had been allotted to him. It was infected with east coast fever, and, consequently, he was informed that he would be required to repair the fence within a month. Upon receipt of this letter, or a few weeks afterwards—the letter was written in October—in November he went down to make the necessary repairs to the fences and found the house in a state of disrepair and the land overgrown with burrweed. He immediately reported the existence of burrweed to the magistrate of the district. He received a reply acknowledging receipt of his letter, which the magistrate had passed on to the inspector of noxious weeds for his information and any action he might think necessary. Prior to this holding being allotted to this man, the grazing had been leased by a neighbouring settler, and this neighbouring settler wrote on the 25th April, 1927, to the settler, My. Bailey—

This Mr. Bailey, immediately he found it covered with burrweed reported the matter to the magistrate, who passed the letter on to the inspector of noxious weeds, who, in turn, passed it on to the police, who, after inspection, gave the man 30 days to rid the farm of burrweed. The letter I have just read discloses the fact that it is at least a two years’ job to clear the farm, yet this settler is told to do it in 30 days. At the end of 30 days he reported that he had not anything like completed the work, and that it would take at least from twelve months or two years. The police then gave him another 30 days, at the end of which a summons was issued against him. He was prosecuted for having burrweed, which was not grown by him, but by the department long before he went on to the place.

Is it right to blame the department?

Yes, I blame the department because they did wrong to allow that holding to get in that condition. The homestead was in a dilapidated condition, the natives having thrown stones through the windows, and the roof in a state of disrepair. The settler had to borrow £150 to make it habitable for his wife. That could have been avoided if the department had seen when the holding was surrendered that the fences and the house were looked after and kept in a state of repair. This settler was prosecuted for having burrweed, found guilty, and, under the mitigating circumstances, cautioned and discharged. He then wrote to me asking me to see the Minister of Lands and ask him to intercede on his behalf to prevent further criminal proceedings being taken against him.

That, of course, I cannot do.

I know he is asking more than the Minister can do. This settler is doing his best to eradicate this weed, but does not know from day to day when he will get another summons. I think this is a striking instance of the consequences which result from the department not taking the necessary steps to have surrendered or abandoned holdings cared for. I do not think the department does anything to look after buildings and improvements on a holding when it is surrendered. Is that so?

I will reply to the hon. member.

That is my experience of other holdings which I have seen. I interviewed the Minister in this matter, and he gave me a sympathetic hearing, and did what he could, but my object in raising it in this House is to give publicity to it, so that intending settlers may know what to expect, and to put them on their guard. The farm was clean when surrendered and the burrweed established itself after the holding had reverted to the department. The department should make it its business to see that holdings are properly cared for and kept free from noxious weeds. This settler tells me he has spent £30 to date on clearing burrweed, that his funds are exhausted, and he does not know how he is going to complete the work. I understand that the farm has burrweed from one end to the other, and it is estimated by disinterested persons that it will take two years to eradicate the weed. That is not the way to encourage settlers, but the right way to discourage land settlement. The probabilities are this will just about break this young settler. [Time limit.]

This is one of the most important votes in the estimates, and it is interesting to point out that at the moment there are only ten or eleven members on the Government benches. However, I suppose they will communicate to their friends what I say on the subject. I thank the Minister for his courteous reply, but I do not think on this question of the water bailiff he dealt with the most important point. During the course of his remarks he led one to believe, not intentionally, there was no delay with regard to this man returning to Potchefstroom. The Auditor-General says—

He was appointed long before that.

He went there on the 3rd of March, and on the 4th of March he left again. He was informed by the superintendent of the settlement that the Labour Department had taken over the left bank at Hartebeestpoort and the appointment of the official was useless. The Auditor-General says—

The Minister is correct in saying the Labour Department was created in 1924, but apparently persons are shifted from one place to another in this instance at an expense of £118 of public money, without there being proper control. The Minister must acknowledge there has been a wastage of this money.

I want to bring a few points regarding my district to the notice of the Minister, one of which I consider important, because it concerns a large number of persons, viz., the settlement of Ohrigstad. The Minister knows that last November I was invited by the occupiers of the settlement to attend a meeting, at which certain complaints would be raised, which I was then to lay before the Minister. The meeting took place on the 18th December, and on the 19th of that month I sent a report to the Minister. The reply was sympathetic enough, but I regret to say that, though it is now June, nothing further has been done in the matter as far as I know.

Which matter? That of re-valuation?

I am coming to it. The Minister shortly before had sent his Land Board, and it had made a report expressing the view that the valuation put by the previous Land Board on the ground, viz., £20 per morgen for irrigable land, was quite fair and reasonable. I have also done my best to make it clear that in comparison with other land in the same circumstances, there was no reason for complaint about the valuation, but now circumstances have arisen which make it somewhat difficult for the occupants to come out at a valuation of £20 per morgen. In any case since the valuation, during recent years, more and more ground above and below the settlement has become developed. There are more cultivated lands and more water is used for the ground above and below the settlement than was the case formerly, and circumstances are such that the settlement board of control has no say over the water in the river. The board has only authority over the water from the river which is available for the settlement, but must be satisfied with the water that is set apart for the settlement by the Ohrigstad Irrigation Board. Owing to the farms which have now become developed above and below the settlement the irrigation board have been obliged to supply them as well with water, and apart from the fact that there is, in any case, at present, such a little water in the river, it followed that by distributing the water over more ground the water granted to the settlement would become smaller and smaller, and the result was that morgen of irrigable land are no longer irrigable. There is not enough water for all the new ground which has been worked, and in the settlement things have come to such a pass that most of the occupiers can only irrigate half their ground—and even with that most of them are satisfied. The ground irrigated is worth £20 a morgen, but the result is that a large part of the ground is no longer irrigable, but is dry ground and can only be used for maize and kafir corn. They are not now so strongly asking for a re-valuation of the ground. The Minister cannot do it.

Do you think the shortage of water is permanent?

I think the shortage will be permanent, because there is so much more ground which requires irrigation. Even if the water is taken as normal over the last 20 or 25 years—at present it is not normal—then there will still be a short age of water because so much more ground requires water. The request is not so much for re-valuation but a re-classification so that a plot of 16 morgen of irrigable land, e.g., valued at £20, thus £320 in all, of which the half is no longer irrigable, shall be valued at £20 a morgen for 8 morgen, i.e., £160, and that the other 8 morgen shall be regarded as dry ground. The answer of the Minister was quite sympathetic, and I hope he will be able to again have a detailed enquiry made, but what will be still more welcome will be a visit by the Minister himself.

I did intend to go but have never been able to get so far.

I shall be glad if the Minister can see his way to do it during the coming recess. The occupiers are a body of industrious people. They are not people who have come from all parts, but old occupiers who were there before the ground was distributed. The people there usually ask when the Minister himself will come and see things and a visit by him will be highly appreciated. The Minister will then be able to get to know the people, to see what class of people they are and the position there, and go into the question whether their request is reasonable or not. That will give general satisfaction, and to me personally it will be a great pleasure to see the Minister for once in my district. (No quorum.) The second point refers to ground granted under Section 11. There are a few of such cases in my district. As to the settlement which I have just referred to, I think that the valuation of £20 was originally fair and reasonable, but in the other two cases I think that the valuation was made by an inspector who did not understand his work, and that a revaluation is necessary there. In nearly all the valuations there, the inspector was too high, and the proof of it is in the report of the Select Committee of Crown lands. There was, e.g., a refusal to sell a farm “Johannesburg.” The committee sees no chance of recommending the sale and thinks that the valuation was much too high.

We know that.

The farm at present injures no one, except the Government, but the valuation of “Johannesburg” was too high from the start. I said so at once, but the same applies to another farm not so far from there. This farm is known by the name of “Goede Hoop,” and the ground there is valued at £7 per morgen, when ordinarily it would not fetch more than £2 10s. or £3 per morgen.

Is there anyone on the farm?

Yes it is occupied now. I see in the report of the Crown Lands Committee that it is recommended that £80,000 shall be written off. I do not wish to say that this is all the result of too high valuation, but in the two cases mentioned it was actually a fact that the valuation was much too high, and I hope that the Minister will see his way to have a revaluation made there.

Provision is made under the Land Bank Act that when a loan is obtained from the Land Bank it can be noted against the title deed, and then if the farm is sold the loan can run with the transfer. I understand, however, that this cannot occur in the case where people have bought farms with money borrowed from the State up to an amount of nine-tenths of the purchase price. Now I know of a hard case of a Mr. Pagden in my constituency. He sold a piece of his farm with the approval of the department, I think early in June, but he could not pass transfer because the Registrar of Deeds refused to do so. The result was that he had to wait until January to pass transfer to the purchaser, and first had to borrow the money to repay the loan to the Land Bank. I think the Minister will admit that this is a very difficult position to be in, and that it is a hard case. The money of the Land Bank is, in any case quite safe, If a man borrows money for fencing or such like then transfer can be passed, and I now want to urge the Minister to so alter the law that a person who has bought ground under the supervision of the Land Bank should also be assisted. It is a small point, but it operates harshly, so that I hope the Minister will give his attention to it.

I want to call the Minister’s attention to the delay which exists in issuing title deeds to the trading stations in the Transkeian territory.

That is not my department.

You have the survey and deeds under you. The districts in the Transkei are being surveyed one by one. There are a large number of trading stations. The owners are asked to put down a deposit to cover the survey and the issue of titles. There is no delay in the survey, but there is a tremendous delay so far as the issue of title is concerned. I want to express appreciation of the courtesy one meets from the department when one asks for issue as a matter of urgency. Every possible attention is given to any request. But this is a very real hardship. In many cases these men cannot sell until titles are issued, and if they do sell they cannot get the money because the buyer stipulates cash against transfer. They are precluded from raising money for the same reason. The deeds office cannot get through the work of preparing the documents and issuing the titles. I do ask the Minister to try and get this matter put right. It is a very real complaint. It only means a little extra assistance to overcome the difficulty.

I would like to ask the Minister for some information about the purchase of farms in the Glen Grey district for natives. The Minister will remember that last year the department purchased a number of farms, and I think there is a vote this year also for a similar purpose. I understand a few farms have not been purchased because they have on them some valuable trading stations. The position is that these farmers are quite willing to sell that land, and all the Native Affairs Department require is the land itself. The farmers are willing that these trading stations should be cut out and that the farm land only should be sold to the Government. The Government refuse to do that. I do not know which department is responsible. The Lands Department blame the Native Affairs Department and vice versa. The Government could get the land at a much more reasonable price if they followed this principle. The natives do not want these trading stations, and the Government do not want them, and I cannot see why these stations on these farms should not be cut out and the Department of Lands simply purchase the land itself. It seem such an obvious thing to do. I have never seen such a muddle as there is in connection with the Native Affairs Department. You never know where you are. Whenever I raise questions pertaining to native affairs which should be dealt with by a particular department we are told the Native Affairs Department is responsible for difficulties that arise. I ask the Minister to look at this from a purely business point of view. It it is in the interest of the country that the trading stations should remain in the hands of farmers and traders then cut them out. I hope the Minister will state whose department is primarily responsible for the purchase of these farms.

I would like to invite the Minister’s attention to the way in which the Umfolozi game reserve in Zulu and still remains a menace to the settlers. Some year ago the Ntambana area was allotted for settlement as a cattle raising district. For a time the settlers were successful and then the game walked out of the adjoining game reserve of Umfolozi and carried the tsetse fly with them to infect the cattle with nagana. The farmers began to lose cattle in very great numbers and were driven desperate by the continued existence of the reserve. The Government was compelled to take action and a big game drive took place, and the game to a large extent was killed off In order to prevent the wandering of game, the Government provided money for a large buffer fence round the game reserve with the object of keeping the game away. That proved to be impossible, and a policy of research and investigation was decided upon. Mr. Harris, the entomologist, who has been studying the matter for five years has now presented his report, and that report seems to presented his report, and that the theories previously held by all the settlers and by the Agricultural Department itself, that the primary cause of nagana is the presence of the big game is borne out by his investigation. He has shown that if the big game were killed off we should not have this menace. It seems to me the time has come when the Government ought to adopt a definite policy on this matter. Years ago the provincial council de-proclaimed the game reserve, and immediately after charged a big sum for a shooting licence which practically made it a game reserve again. So that de-proclaiming it as far as killing off the game is concerned was useless. The Government has allowed that state of affairs to continue. I think the Government ought to take the reserve over, cut it up into suitable allotments, and give it out for nothing to people who would be willing to clear away the bush and the game from that area. Obviously, it would be cheaper for the Government to give that land away, than to suffer the continual economic loss due to the presence of nagana. The difficulty at the moment is the existence in the game reserve of white rhino, and they should be removed to the Sabie game reserve, it has been suggested that they could be removed by inducing them to feed upon some green crops which could be drugged. I think it is high time that the Government should consider this matter, and make what arrangements they think necessary to carry out the experiment at an early stage in order to try to get one or two removed to the Sabie game reserve; and if they succeed in that they may succeed in getting the whole herd away. Then I would like to ask the Minister’s opinion with regard to the policy to be pursued in respect of the experiment with different crops at Umkuzi. I understand that Mr. Thornton has presented a report to the Minister, and I would ask him if he has read that report. What does he propose doing?

In reply to the hon. member for East London (North) (Brig.-Gen. Byron), I can only assure him that I am fully alive to the Sundays River settlement and that the scheduled area is far too big. There is not enough water for it. I hold land which is, or was, considered very valuable, and is in the irrigable area, but so far I have not had it scheduled or given it out; if I gave it out I would have to give it water, and there is not water enough for the people who are there already. The Irrigation Commission is going into the whole question of the Sundays River settlement, and when it reports we will know what is the size of the irrigable land. I must say I am very sorry for those people who put a lot of money and a lot of hard work into the land, and things are not too pleasant for them—I will not say more about it. With regard to the matter raised by the hon. member for Klip River (Mr. Anderson), I am very sorry about that case, and there may be more cases like that. The custom of the department is, as soon as a holding is cancelled or abandoned, to instruct the inspector to appoint a caretaker. Sometimes he cannot find a man to go and live on the holding, and he appoints a neighbour—that is all he can do. We cannot hire a man to live there, as most of these land settlement operations are run at a loss. That is how it happens that these holdings are sometimes in a dilapidated state. It appears to me as if the provincial authorities were at fault here, to prosecute a man who told them there was burrweed—to prosecute him for an offence which he has not committed. I have been frequently approached by the provincial authorities and by farmers to clear Crown land of noxious weeds, but it is a hopeless task— the river banks are full of burrweed, xanthium spinosa, and other things. I will do whatever I can do for this man, because he has been very harshly treated, to say the least of it. The hon. member for East London (North) (Brig.- Gen. Byron) has asked me a question with regard to Mr. Owen, and I may say the appointment was made a long time before he actually proceeded to Hartebeestpoort. I kept him at Potchefstroom to teach the new man we were keeping there how to distribute water in the Potchefstroom area, and that is why he did not come at once to Pretoria.

†*I may tell the hon. member for Lydenburg (Mr. Nieuwenhuize) that I am acquainted with the position at the Ohrigstad settlement. The Land Board was sent there to see what the position was, and whether the people were not leading water by wrong methods. If they do not know how to do so then they occasion a waste of water. Our report does not show that the people do actually use the water in the most economical way. I let that rest, however. If it is so that there is not enough water, then it will not be right to make them all pay the levy for irrigable land. I admit frankly that £20 per morgen is too much if the ground is not irrigable. It is, however, not too much for irrigable land. If there is not enough water then we will go into the position. I really do not know how the position at the other place can be as stated by the hon. member. The Union is large. I have an enormous amount of work and cannot go to every place. I admit that the case mentioned by the hon. member for Cradock (Mr. G. C. van Heerden) is a very hard one, but the hon. member possibly knows that formerly there was no difficulty there. The Registrar of Deeds pointed out that it was against the law, and that he could not pass transfer, and it took quite a long time to get over the difficulty. That was the reason of the delay in Mr. Pagden’s case. I admit that it is possible for those cases to arise, and I hope it will be possible next year to make certain amendments in the Land Settlement Act.

†I am informed that there is not so much delay so far as my department is concerned in regard to trading stations.

There is never any delay in the Select Committee on Native Affairs.

There has to be delay, when applications are made during the recess, but the delays are not my fault. I have no interest in buying land from the natives, and I consult the Native Affairs Department. I have had gentlemen here who want to sell land, and they are a hard lot to drive a bargain with. They all want the topmost price, although, of course, we are all more or less like that. My department obtains a valuation of the land from the Land Board, the local magistrate, and the divisional council. I have to try to get the land for a reasonable price, and if the sellers want more, I cannot buy it I do not know what to do with the white rhinos in Zululand. If they are exterminated there will be no more left in the world with the exception of a few in the Congo, so it is a matter we should not consider lightly. I have written to the society in England interested in the preservation of wild game, and asked for their advice. The white rhino is a big and very strong animal, so it would be a very difficult job to remove them. Hon. members interested should consider the matter and see if they can remove three or four specimens to the national park, and then there would be more difficulty. I have been considering giving out the land in the special shooting areas at a very low-rate. The provincial council objects very strongly to the extermination of the rhinoceros. If men of capital could go to Zululand and clear the land, I think we might get rid of the tsetse fly. There is a consensus of opinion that if game is destroyed the tsetse will disappear. In the Transvaal in the old days a place about 80 miles from Rustenburg was called Vliegpoort, and when the buffalo left the country, the fly disappeared. I am not so certain the game is responsible for the fly. I have just had a report by an expert who made certain recommendations as to the establishment of an experimental station in the area referred to by the hon. member, and I hope the greater part of the recommendations, if not all, will be carried out by the Agricultural Department. As I have replied to all questions. I hope the vote will now go through.

I hope the Minister will not be hurried into an indiscriminate slaughter of game under the impression that game is responsible for the tsetse. Certainly, if there is valuable land suitable for settlement the game should not be allowed to stand in the way of utilizing the land. I have probably had as varied experience with tsetse fly as any man in the House. I have studied it in East Africa. West Africa, Central Africa and Zululand, but I believe no scientist has yet discovered the missing link in the cycle of existence of the tsetse fly. In East Africa I have seen tsetse hanging like a swarm of bees under a horse’s belly at a spot where there was no game within 50 miles. You can go through the Congo forests by motor-car and nick off dead tsetse flies from the radiator, although there is no game in the vicinity. In the Kruger National Park, which teems with game, there is no tsetse. In Zululand, however, game and tsetse seem to go together. I believe some day it will be found that some type of vegetation will solve the problem. I do not believe it is the game and I hope the Minister will not be in a hurry in accepting the conclusion, because from the days of Bruce scientists have not been able to say definitely that game and tsetse go together inevitably. I am not averse to the Umfolozi reserve being opened to settlers if the land is suitable, but we should remember that in the month of May every year we have the same agitation from Natal—

It goes on to June, and then dies away. I hope the Minister will be very careful and have a more careful study made of the habits of the tsetse fly before agreeing to the killing off of the game. With regard to the white rhino, the House seems to treat the hon. member’s suggestion as a joke. Speaking as a member of the National Parks Board, I can say that we have been taking expert information from other countries, and it seems to me it may be possible that we may be able to drug these animals some way or other into oblivion. It is suggested the new flag to be used, but probably they would never recover from that. Experts do seriously suggest that these animals might be drugged some way and be loaded on trolleys and be taken to the Sabie reserve. It would be a thousand pities if these white rhino are exterminated. Once a species like that is exterminated all the money in the world and all the regret will not restore it. If the United States of America had an original species of that kind they would spend untold millions to keep them, and we should be blamed by posterity if these last remaining remnants of what is a pre-historic animal are exterminated. I hope the Minister will take steps to see these white species are not exterminated.

I don’t want the Minister to think I have advocated the extermination of the white rhino., but an effort should be made to find some way of removing them. I have also studied the tsetse fly, and in Central Africa I find divergent opinions are held to-day. We have carried on our investigation of the life of the tsetse fly over a greater continuous length of time than in any other part of Africa. We have had a camp at Umfolosi for five years and we have arrived at definite conclusions which deny entirely the premises which the hon. member for Port Elizabeth (Col. D. Reitz) puts up. The first feed which the tsetse fly has in life is on an animal, and its eggs are laid in a damp spot under trees, where the game go down to water, so that its food supply is secured. That much Mr. Harris has established. The flies do not fly by instinct or scent but they fly by sight, and if we destroyed the bush they would disappear. I have advocated that the land be given out to those who are willing to destroy the bush. The tsetse fly would then disappear because there would be no shade for them. I want it to be perfectly clear I am not advocating the destruction of white rhino. We have been discussing this matter for ten years without coming to a satisfactory conclusion. You cannot prove that in order to destroy nagana it is necessary to destroy the game, and so the existing state of things continues from year to year. The existence of small game reserves is not justified in Zululand. You have a game park at Sabie which will be the biggest game reserve in the world, and we ought to be satisfied with it and not have these little game reserves all over the country, which are centres for the distribution of the tsetse to all the surrounding districts.

I do not know whether the Minister has taken steps to find out what has been the experience in Rhodesia, where a great deal of work has been done in connection with the matter. The general opinion is that the fly goes hand in hand with the game, and that is based on the fact that when rinderpest swept through the country two years ago a large amount of game was exterminated, with the result that the fly went back. Since then there has been no rinderpest, and the head of game has got up again and the fly has been brought into areas in which it was formerly not seen. When I was in Rhodesia we tried experiments. We tried shooting down the game in certain areas to check the fly, but the results were not very decisive, but that information can probably be obtained by the Minister. There is another experiment being tried there at the present time. Areas are set apart and have been fenced or are being fenced and cleared of game as far as it can be cleared, and on the result of that a good deal depends as to what will be the policy to be followed in future. There is a difficulty in arriving at a satisfactory solution. You can get areas fenced in and exterminate the big game, but it is practically impossible to exterminate the small game, and there is nothing to show that the small game will not carry the tsetse. This experiment, however, will show whether the fly and the game go together, and the Minister will be well advised to consult the Southern Rhodesian Government to see how far the experiment has got and what conclusion they have reached.

The information of the Minister regarding this question of titles is not quite correct. The statutory size of these trading sites is five morgen, and they do not require to be sanctioned by the House and it is not necessary that they should come before the Native Affairs Committee. It is provided for by law. It is only when the site exceeds five morgen that special sanction has to be obtained. It has been admitted these men have sites a little exceeding five morgen, perhaps one or two morgen over, and that they should not be deprived of the excess. In these cases the Minister is right in saying they come before the House, but the majority of cases go through in the ordinary way and the House has not to approve of them. There is a great congestion of work, but let the Minister enquire in the Deeds Department whether there is or is not delay, and if there is not delay, I am wrong, and if there is delay I ask the Minister to take the necessary steps to expedite issue of these titles.

Not only in regard to these trading sites, but there is congestion and delay in regard to all registration work because we have not got sufficient officials.

It is very serious in so far as the trading sites in the Transkei are concerned. I would also like the Minister to give some information in regard to the question of aerial surveys. As the Minister knows, it has been the policy for many years past to survey the lands in the various Transkeian districts under the individual tenure system. That has been found very expensive. I believe it cost something like £54,000 to survey a single district, and the work took five years. We know that experiments have been carried cut in regard to aerial surveys. The instruments have been rather crude, rather out of date, old cameras have been used, but I believe there is a very big field for aerial surveys in connection with these districts. I would like the Minister to give us a resume of what results have been obtained and whether there is a possibility of further experiments being carried out or practical work being done on these lines. We are all anxious to see this system of surveying the districts in the Transkei extended as far as possible.

I want to call the Minister’s attention to the amount of money which has been spent by his department. My hon. friend has outstanding in his department something over four millions of money, of which £214,000 was due twelve months before the date of this report. Last night we wrote off £93,000, in the shape of bad debts really. I have here a white paper furnished by the Lands Department showing what had been written off previously, the amount being £185,000. So that altogether we have had £278,000 of bad debts written off in this department.

It will come to half a million.

I want to know something definite about that. What is generally the position of the Lands Department in regard to this enormous amount of outstandings? There is certainly a feeling abroad that we shall never recover an enormous amount of this money and yet we are going to be asked to vote something more.

That is why we have stopped this sort of thing. We are only going in for Section 11, purchases, now.

I am very glad to hear that, but even then I think that the margin is a little bit too close. I think you advance now seven-eighths under Clause 11.

Nine-tenths.

That is too narrow a margin, in my opinion. On that you had a certain number of farms thrown on your hands. Perhaps my hon. friend will give us some idea what he is doing and what his policy is in regard to that question. I want also to ask him if he is aware of negotiations going on at the present moment between the Irrigation Department and the Municipality of Pretoria about the purchase of a certain amount of water from the Hartebeestpoort Dam. I see that there is a large vote for the Hartebeestpoort Settlement and I would like to know whether his consent was obtained or whether he has been consulted in the matter, because I should say it is going to make a tremendous difference to the land in that area, as I understand that the municipality want between four and six million gallons per day. I shall raise the question again under the Minister of Agriculture. There are two or three other points I want to touch on. I associate myself with what has been said by the hon. member for Von Brandis (Mr. Nathan) in regard to the increase of the staff of the Lands Department. The Minister has given us some explanation and I do not want to pursue that matter further. In regard to the Land Boards, these bodies seem to be very expensive, an amount of £18,000 being put down here to meet expenses. I should say that is a pretty stiff amount to spend on Land Boards.

I explained why last year. I will do it again.

It will do no harm to explain a second time. It may perhaps induce the Minister to keep a tighter hand on his expenditure. I want to know why the Minister cannot get rid of some of these Government Irrigation Settlements. He has got rid of the one at Brandvlei, in the Calvinia district, but he still carries on the Van Wyk’s Drift Settlement. It must be at least 30 years since that was started. I see that he proposes to spend £275 to keep it going. Then there is the Douglas Settlement, another £2,000. Then we have Klipdrift. We have written off here £36,000, besides what we wrote off last night. Why does not my hon. friend, when he can, make a clean job of these things? Then we have Kopjes Settlement, £2,000. There was something written off that last night.

I do not think anything was written off Kopjes last night.

I think something was written off. What I don’t understand is why these expenses are occurring year after year. In one case we have a settlement which has been a drain on the country for over 30 years, Van Wyk’s Vlei. If my hon. friend took a firm attitude he could deal with it the same as he dealt with the settlement at Brandvlei. Then I went to call his attention to the amount that he is spending on the National Park. I must say it came as a shock to me to see that it was going to cost no less than £4,000 a year.

It is going to cost much more.

I hope the Minister of Finance will put his foot down.

I hope it will be more.

I hope it won’t. In my opinion it is a pure luxury.

You are too business-like.

There is another item I would like to call attention to, namely, payment of compensation in respect of a portion of the Richtersveld, Namaqualand, £2,000. Perhaps my hon. friend will explain that. I do not understand it at all. There is also an item, payment to Divisional Council, George, for development of Herold’s Bay, £569. What is the meaning of that? Is this place to be made a playground for the people of the George district? Why cannot they do it themselves? Then there is just one other point. I think my hon. friend could give us some explanation as to what the position is in regard to these probationary lessees. I see he proposes to spend for the Hartebeestpoort settlement £15,000. The purchase of stock, etc., is £11,000. I think it would be extremely interesting to know how these experiments are going on. They were started by way of experiment. I think myself Hartebeestpoort is a little bit expensive, but perhaps the Minister can give us an explanation which will justify the expenditure. Then there is Olifants settlement, £10,000.

There is no doubt, from the remarks of the hon. member for Cape Town (Central) Mr. Jagger) in regard to this grant to the Kruger National Park, that he knows very little, if anything, about the matter. In this regard he seems to have a total lack of vision. I might refer him to a statement made by one of the most famous traveller lecturers in the world, Mr. Branson de Cou, who arrived with the American tourists in the “Franconia.” He said that South Africa’s greatest attraction was the Sabie Game Reserve.

We are going to spend as much money to get the Americans here as they will spend in the country.

This gentleman said that the Sabie Game Reserve, now known as the Kruger National Park, contained animals that were altogether unique, and that these parks should be more fully exploited. The board has been functioning for some little time now, and has been doing very good work, but we are faced with the position that this invaluable asset cannot without expenditure be made available for and accessible to the public. You can only do that by providing the amenities which are necessary to induce the public to come there in the way of rest houses and so on. These things cost money. I am very strongly of opinion that a substantial contribution in this direction should be made by the railways, because they will derive the greatest benefit from this great asset. If the railways belonged to a private company they would seize on this great moneymaking opportunity and they would exploit it to the very fullest. This park, which has been described by this and many other authorities as the greatest asset and attraction in South Africa, would, I repeat, be exploited to the very fullest I would like the Minister of Railways and his board to visit this park and convince themselves of the potentialities of this asset to the railway system. We have had the good fortune that the park’s board has been able to secure the services of Col. Stevenson Hamilton, the former warden, for a further limited period. We consider now would be the opportunity to get him to organize things, to lay out the roads and to get the rest houses fixed up. I am sure this is going to be a source of wealth to the State. There is no question about it. I must say the policy of the Minister of Railways towards the park is one that savours of parsimoniousness. Under the provincial administration free travelling facilities were given to the board’s personnel. That privilege has been taken away. I would appeal to the Minister of Finance and the Minister of Railways to listen to the appeal of the Minister of Lands for funds. He knows the position and he knows the possibilities, and he is doing his very best, and I hope he will succeed in convincing the Minister of Finance and the Minister of Railways of the necessity, from a business point of view, of supporting this institution. The programme of the board is not to launch into any very great expenditure at once, but to arrange points to which people will be able to be conveyed— I hope by State vehicles—to the various centres of the park, and will be able to see to the fullest advantage the faunal wealth of the park and even to hear the lions roar by night, I do appeal to the Minister of Finance to put the money down—we must have the money. You have a board of business men who will look after the funds and not go in for lavish expenditure. You will get full value and not only full value but big returns.

I would like to add a word in support of what has been said by the hon. member for Hospital (Mr. Papenfus). I do hope the Minister of Finance will come to our assistance. The hon. member for Cape Town (Central) (Mr. Jagger) I am afraid, has shown a lack of imagination in this matter. Speaking as a member of the National Park Board. We do need funds very badly, and I am sure it would be sound finance.

That I do not believe. I have heard that before.

It will take a long time to develop and for the first year or two the advantages may not be so obvious. The Minister of Railways, I think, does not quite realize we are in earnest. The Minister has not been very sympathetic with the park so far, and I think he thinks it is a footling business, and we are not really doing anything. I can assure him we are building roads at this very moment and the chief beneficiary will be the railways. It seemed cheese paring on the part of the railways to withdraw even so small a privilege, but an important one to the board, of the warrants granted to the game wardens and railways. We not only expected the old system to remain, but we expected that the railway would help us still further and contribute to our building roads there, because that is going to be the chief factor when the park opens.

What if people take their motorcars?

They have to take them to White River, and people will truck their cars.

They will go by car.

I think that the railways would materially benefit, but apart from that, the game reserve is the one thing to-day that is focussing the attention of tourists on this country, and the Americans and others are asking about this reserve. The name of Minister of Lands is indissolubly linked with the game reserve, and it is going to be remembered in South Africa that he has given legal status to that reserve. The Minister drew my attention some time ago to a statement in “Die Burger” that there is some talk of game vanishing in the Komati River area, and that he proposes to put European settlers there. If that area does not adjoin the Kruger National Park—

It does not.

To all intents and purposes it is part and parcel of it, and is the most unhealthy area in the whole of the Union—certainly of the Transvaal. If you want to kill a European, put him down there. Instead of putting people there, foredoomed to die by blackwater and malaria, add it to the Kruger National Park, or make it an adjunct, as a separate shooting area, instead of a settlement area. The only remaining herd of hippo is in that area, which is teeming with other game. I am rather afraid the Minister of Lands may lose some of his prestige if he associates his name with settlement at the Komati River area. It will be a failure, and a much worse failure than the one we have achieved in Zululand, because the climate is absolutely deadly. You cannot irrigate the land, and the most you can put in are 20 farmers, of whom 19 will die of fever, and for that you exterminate 30,000 blue wildebeest.

May I point out to my hon. friend another reason that would stimulate the Minister to continue his forward policy in connection with the National Park? I am sure it is a very good thing to bring many tourists, whether they are Americans or from any other country, but my reason for this is that you are leaving a heritage for your children, who will see what the country was like in the day of their fathers, the pioneers. I consider there is nothing on which Parliament could vote public funds better than on the preservation of a monument of this character for future generations. But I want to see the people of South Africa having an opportunity of seeing that place. I hope that the Minister of Finance, notwithstanding how anxious he is in times which are becoming more serious from the financial point of view than they were last year, will see that there are many ways of cutting down expenditure without curtailing that on the National Park, which I consider a great asset to this country.

I think that Parliament did not know what it was committing itself to in the National Park. It is clear it is in the hands of enthusiasts, but to expect to make this pay out of tourists and travellers is absurd. It is all right in America, where they have 100,000,000 of people, but to expect one and a halt millions of people to go into the game reserve and hear the wonder of lions roaring; well, it is not business. I am absolutely certain that we shall not make anything like that out of it. As to tourists from overseas, I know my hon. friend has been pressed to bring them. I do not want to speak in disparaging terms of tourists, but you can spend too much on bringing them. Do they spend so much? You are going to spend more money than ever we make out of these gentlemen. I do not want to run them down, but I think too much fuss is made of these tourists. We must have to look to the Minister of Finance to keep a very tight hand over these gentlemen (of the board) who are quite sincere, but must have some regard to what the country can afford in a matter of this kind, and £4,000 is a fairly liberal amount with which to start.

I can inform my hon. friend that I had no reason to doubt the fact that it is going to cost us some money. It was said it would bring in revenue, but I have never attached much importance to that. I would like to point out that formerly these people got £6,000 from the provincial administration—

£7,000.

And they are getting only £3,000 from them now. It is the same amount we were paying formerly, but the whole House felt that we had to start this project, as it is a good thing, and having spent a very large sum of money to buy this land, the country will have to be prepared to do a little more. Representations have been made, and I think we should come to the assistance of this board. I agree with the hon. member for Cape Town (Central) (Mr. Jagger) that we are not making much money out of this thing. I am rather an enthusiast in regard to the preservation of game, and, consequently, I think we have to come to the assistance of the board. The board will have to provide rest houses, but we are not sacrificing the amount of money the hon. member thinks. So far they have asked for a loan, but I don’t think there will be much opportunity of getting it repaid.

Take a mortgage on the lions.

I can understand the Minister of Railways is not anxious to open up roads to enable people to travel to the park from Johannesburg by motorcar instead of using his railways, but he might help us to construct roads through the park. If Parliament is prepared that I should contribute a little more to achieve the original object for which the park was established, something might be done by building roads in the park. I anticipated that we should have to do a little more, but we are not spending £4,000, this sum being merely a transfer from the provincial council to the central Government.

The hon. member for Cape Town (Central) (Mr. Jagger) does not usually talk through his hat.

What nonsense.

Any man with any kind of imagination must see that the game reserve in the Northern Transvaal is going to be a tremendous asset. Why, even the little toy show at Rondebosch attracts large numbers of people to see two miserable lions and an ostrich. The Johannesburg zoological gardens, which are among the finest in the world, are nothing to what this game reserve will be. We are going to have thousands and thousands of tourists to see it.

Oh!

You don’t know everything. After all, the Transvaal contributes by far the largest portion of the revenue of the Union, and we are entitled to have a certain amount of money spent on our game reserve. It will be a paying concern, and we shall get our money back, either from the railways or the tourists, and, in addition, we shall give a certain amount of pleasure, and instruction to the people in the Union. The spirit of hunting is not dead in this country, but only dormant, and if we had proper rest houses and roads, an enormous number of visitors would go to the game reserve.

Are we going to promote the hunting idea now? It will be quite sufficient if the Minister of Railways gives cheap fares, but if he takes my advice he will not spend sixpence in building roads or rest houses. Where is there any proper sense of perspective over this matter? The Minister is being pressed from all parts of the Union to construct roads to develop the country, so why should he spend money on building roads for pleasure purposes? How can the game reserve pay with our small white population? Our business is to develop the country.

I think the enthusiasm of the hon. member for Parktown (Mr. Rockey) has carried him away, but he reached the topmost level when he spoke about the “toy zoo” at Rondebosch. I fear I have been rather backward in not asking the Government to do something to develop that zoo and to make it worthy of Cape Town.

Where the roads are already in existence.

I am entirely in sympathy with the views expressed by the hon. member for Port Elizabeth (Central) (Col. D. Reitz), because the Transvaal game park is a magnificent asset and a memorial to a great man. We should do our best to hand down to posterity something worthy of that memorial.

This matter should not be regarded merely from a Transvaal point of view, as it is a national matter, and I wish members had the vision to look at it in the proper perspective. At present the Kruger National Park is not making headway, as it is not accessible to the public at large. When that drawback is removed many thousands of people will flock there from the Union and from abroad to see game life in its natural state, and I believe one of the first to do so will be the hon. member for Cape Town (Central) (Mr. Jagger). I think even he will be thrilled with the roar of the lions, and I believe he will live to see that he has taken a wrong view of the question. He is a lover of nature and he has set an example by placing fauna in his magnificent estate here. There is nothing comparable in the world to the Kruger National Park. It is a magnificent business proposition and will attract thousands of people. I am very glad to see that the Minister of Finance recognizes that some assistance should be given to it. The question of road construction on the park need not alarm anybody. It is not a question of the construction of an expensive road system but good tracks and dirt roads can be constructed at a very cheap rate indeed. We must unlock this asset as soon as possible. Col. Hamilton is back and he has come back io start this thing on a proper basis. I am pleased to hear the Minister of Finance proposes to give the board every necessary assistance.

I notice in papers laid on the Table by the Minister there is a statement dealing with the amount of public funds respectively spent in the Free State, Natal, Transvaal and the Cape. With regard to land purchased out of public money. In the last year, in the Cape Province, under Section 11. land has been bought for £85,000, in Natal £32,000, in the Transvaal £299,000 and in the Free State £198,000. The amounts seem extraordinarily disproportionate. It will be interesting if the Minister will tell us how it comes about. Is there a bigger demand for land in the Transvaal than in the Free State? I have no doubt the discrepancy is not due to any axe on the part of the Land Board, but is due to lack of application on the part of the public. Undoubtedly the agricultural population seems to be shifting north, and I was wondering whether the Minister has information in his department and whether he can give us some light on this interesting phase as to whether I am correct in thinking the population is going north, as far as rural pursuits are concerned.

I want to refer to a series of questions put to me. I won’t go into the question of the National Park; it has been sufficiently discussed, but; I want the hon. member to look at this aspect of the case. Of course, it will not pay now, but it will pay eventually; it may be in 20 or 30 years. I am informed all the tourists from America make enquiries about the park, but they cannot get there because there are no roads. I look at it from a natural point of view, to preserve this fauna for future generations. With regard to the figures the hon. member gives they are not quite correct. The amount is £4,136,000, but it is capital debt which is not due yet.

I mentioned it to show the enormous amount of money outstanding.

It is perfectly true there is a large amount of arrears outstanding. I do my best to get the money in every way I can, but you get desperate in this country because droughts set in or reins destroy the crops. Take the Northern Transvaal this year, Zoutpansberg, they have had such a tremendous drought the people cannot pay, and you cannot press blood from a stone. You can only do your best and I am doing that. When we get a good year again the payments mount up and the settlers know we look at their affairs very closely. At best land settlement is a precarious business in all countries. I have gone into it in other countries and I have found proportionately they are worse off than we are. Take New Zealand. They wrote off two and a half million pounds on the settlements, whilst the amount we wrote down, including improvements, comes to £500,000 odd. My hon. friend has remarked about expenditure on Land Boards. I explained last year that under this new purchase scheme, Section 11, the work has increased vastly, and as the law requires that the Land Boards must make an inspection I must act on their report. If you consider that in the two years that I have mentioned there were only 1,100 applications, and since this Act came into force there have been over 4,800 and that the board will have to travel from one place to another to inspect, the money provided for is not too much. Last year we spent less than £18,000. Apart from that the board sits much longer because they have much more work to do. With regard to irrigation settlement nothing will please me more than to get rid of these settlements, but I cannot because these people owe us money. How am I to do it? With regard to the new expenditure for new probationers, we are settling the last parties now at Hartebeestpoort. Last, year I gathered two-fifths of the crop and Hartebeestpoort brought in over £12,000. which I paid to the Treasury.

It is very satisfactory so far.

This is the only kind of settlement which so far has proved satisfactory.

Business suspended at 6 p.m. and resumed at 8.6 p.m.

I want to ask the Minister of Lands if he can give the Committee any information as to the position at Hartebeestpoort in regard to the settlements there. I think it is obvious that things are not quite as they might be in that area. There are four departments in control in various ways. There is the Lands Department, the Labour Department, the Irrigation Department and the Agricultural Department all working there. From what I can discover, there is a great deal of overlapping and there is insufficient co-ordination of the work, and from a report last December there appears to be a considerable amount of dissatisfaction in that area. It appears that there have been meetings of farmers and it is stated that they approached the Minister when he was there and laid their complaints before him. The settlers there petitioned the Department of Lands to retain the services of a Mr. Donkin, who was seconded from the Agricultural Department, for service under the Labour Department. I saw myself last year what wonderful work has been done there in several regards. I think that this officer was very largely responsible for the lay-out, the method of development and for the progress made in that area. Then it is alleged by the malcontents—the people who are complaining—that the Labour Department is encroaching far beyond its province and that there is loss, friction and dissatisfaction. The Labour Department, it is maintained, should concern itself only with the poor white labour settlement. There is no question about it that the proper authority to look after the agricultural training of settlers and their subsequent settlement is the Lands or Agricultural Department. There is a gentleman whom I met, the Reverend Mr. van der Horst, who is doing wonderful work amongst those people in so far as their welfare is concerned, and the extraordinary amount of devotion that he is giving to those men is beyond praise. I grant all that, but I do think that there ought to be some co-ordination and that the whole matter ought to be carefully considered with a view to having a proper system of control. I do not know whether the Minister and his colleagues have any scheme in view, but I think the country ought to know what is being done there, because when the measure which established the settlement was passed in this House it was understood, amongst other things, that about one hundred or so allotments would be used for training settlers under the Lands Department, and after having been trained there, that they would be removed to some other place where they would be given their allotments. When I was there it struck me that those men who had been at Hartebeestpoort for a matter of about two years were making their homes there, and I saw some of the holdings where the men are obviously putting their hearts into the work, as if they were the owners of the land, and I think in a case like that it is very difficult indeed to decide whether that place should be kept entirely as a training place or whether these men are going to be permitted to make their permanent homes there. I also saw cases where men should have been, in my opinion, removed.

Eight have been removed since you were there.

I am very glad. These eight are probably amongst the men I saw. There is another point. It was understood that these men who were having their training there would do their own work, that is, that you would have only white labour on the settlement. I myself saw quite a number of natives irrigating and doing other work. I called the attention of one of the officers to this and asked whether that was the custom. I was informed, in reply, that that was not the intention, and I understood that steps would be taken to bring that state of things to an end. I would like to know definitely whether the men who have been trained there are to be given their holdings as permanent settlers, or is it intended to continue the place, as at first stated, merely for training, and to remove the settler, after he has been trained, to some other area. That is as far as the Lands Department is concerned. In regard to the Labour Department, I shall have to deal with that later on. These settlements, especially in an area like that which is looked upon as the future home of close settlement on a big scale in this country, ought to be under the general control of one head. The question of settlement in general I do not want to deal with in this regard, but I want to give the Minister an opportunity of saying what the intentions are and what the position is to-day, in reference to this particular settlement and training scheme.

I should like to suggest to the Minister of Lands that the time has arrived when the whole question of land settlement should be more closely linked up with the question of immigration, because, in my opinion, there is no Minister who is in a better position to judge of the capacity of the country to absorb immigrants than the Minister of Lands, who commands information which is available to his department alone with regard to the openings in connection with land settlement and as to the productivity of the land, and it seems to me we should do well if we entrusted to the Minister, and I think the present Minister is singularly well fitted for the position, the control of immigration into this country. None of us can contemplate the question of immigration, the future constitution of the population of South Africa, without realizing that we owe a duty to this country, to those of both races who have made the country what it is, to see that their proud heritage in this country is maintained. I think if the Minister had control of the policy of immigration, and initiated a policy that looked to the development of a nation in this country of which we could be proud, and aimed at eliminating the kind of immigration unsuitable for land settlement or for admission at all, then I think we should be doing good instead of the harm that I fear we are doing under the present haphazard immigration policy. I am suggesting that it is desirable that this particular side of the administration should be passed to the Minister of Lands. We have had several changes. We have had the Department of Immigration changing hands, and there is no reason in the world why immigration should not be placed in the hands of the Minister of Lands. I think we should be much better served if the two departments were under the one control.

The remarks of the previous speaker seem opportune to bring up another question in connection with policy, and that is the necessity for some reorganization of the Lands Department. The department, as it exists to-day, is the amalgamation of four previous administrations. We are now administering a huge department, constantly growing, having a capital account of something like £7,000,000, and with estates valued at a tremendous figure. This department goes into intimate details connected with the business of thousands of individuals throughout the country. The department is being administered under obsolete laws of the different provinces, with the result that there is a constantly growing congestion. Hundreds of people whose economic activity depends upon the quick despatch of business through the department are held up because of the bottle neck through which all the department’s business must go. I do not wish to criticize the efficiency of the department. I know it is probably the most efficient department of State, and I have nothing but admiration for the manner in which the officials carry out their duties. I think that the department, as a whole, probably has more skilled officials, people who work harder, than any other department. The Secretary for Lands is working about 16 hours a day. But despite all their good work we are in this unfortunate position. There is too much centralization. The same subject has to be handled too many times by too many people, and nobody but the Minister has real executive authority. The laws of the Cape in connection with land require that Parliament should put its sanction upon every little transaction which should ordinarily be in the discretion of a junior official. As an instance of what takes place, let me call the attention of the House to the report of the Select Committee on Crown Lands. Is it not trifling with things when twelve members of this House have to sit in solemn discussion upon this transaction, for instance, the sale out of hand in favour of L. M. Good at a purchase price of £5 of a certain piece of land which is an encroachment on Crown lands at Maitland. So it goes right through. All these trifling little matters in connection with the Cape Province have to come before Parliament. It is perfectly absurd and that is merely an illustration of what is going-on. There should be a complete reorganization of all this, and a devolution of authority. What business concern could possibly carry on business having a capital of £7,000,000, of which it has to send in an account every year, conducted in such a way as this? The Minister has to put his sign manual upon practically every little transaction. Can one wonder that the Minister has not the time to give to that study of the problems of land settlement which is so absolutely necessary? When the Minister came into office I went on a deputation to see him at Pretoria, and I found he had literally hundreds of people waiting to see him. This simply shows that the Minister is needlessly brought into intimate contact with thousands of individuals, and he arrives at decisions connected with their economic life which ought not to come under his notice at all, except in a superficial way. We have grown altogether beyond that stage of development. I think the time has actually come now when we ought to have someone investigating the whole circumstances of the department, and endeavour to put it on a proper business footing with authority given to junior officials to settle these minor details. In connection with that other department of State, the Irrigation Department, surely if there are two matters which ought to be under one department, they are land and irrigation.

I regret I cannot allow the hon. member to discuss that now.

I think the Minister might set up some departmental committee to go into our land laws and endeavour to bring in some consolidating measure to do away with this circumlocution and expense.

I see under the vote here a number of items for the purchase of stock, equipment, seeds and so on. The Auditor-General’s report for last year, paragraph 54, drew attention to the undesirability of the method of dealing with the distribution of seeds, wheat and oats for the relief of distress. I want to know if any of these votes are for the relief of distress. The objection the Auditor-General made was two-fold. One was because it came out of a loan vote, and the second point he made was that it is very difficult to follow up all this expenditure. Part of it goes to the Department of Agriculture, part to the Department of Labour, and also the Native Affairs Department and Lands. I wanted to raise the whole question as to how far these departments are working in watertight compartments. It makes it quite impossible for us to obtain any real idea as to what the total expenditure is for one and the same object. Take the relief of distress. The House does not know even now what expenditure has been incurred year by year in the relief of distress. What I want to know is—it is the same old problem—to what extent is the Lands Department buying land for certain purposes, the Labour Department for similar purposes, and the Agricultural Department for similar purposes, all working within the limits of the law, but in a direction which gives the House no opportunity of gaining a comprehensive idea of what the expenditure on any particular object is. It makes it such a difficulty when we come to deal with the Minister of Labour, who makes such glowing claims as to the way he has been able to settle the problem of unemployment. The House really is left entirely in the dark. I want the Minister to tell us to what extent the expenditure on seed, wheat and oats is for a similar purpose to that of the Labour Department and that of the Native Affairs Department.

I hope the Minister will tell us exactly what is going on at Hartebeestpoort, how much of the activity falls under the Department of Lands, and how much under the Department of Labour. I hold that the Lands Department is probably the most efficiently run in the country, but I hold a very different opinion of the Labour Department. I see that the Lands Department has spent, I think, something like £201,000 on Hartebeestpoort during the last year, and the Lord only knows what the Minister of Labour has spent on the same place. If you look at the map to-day it reminds you of the tsetse belts in East Africa, from which natives tell you to keep away. So at Hartebeestpoort you have labour belts. This land settlement business is being run in water-tight compartments, and the Minister of Labour is running social uplift experiments at Hartebeestpoort which is costing millions. Doornkop should be run by the Lands Department. The Minister of Labour, with his pernickety ideas, has stepped in in land settlement. The Lands Department shrug their shoulders, and say they have nothing to do with it. They should have something to do with it. It is land settlement, and the Minister of Labour should not be allowed to run amok in land settlement as he is doing. The Minister of Lands might tell us he does not know what the Minister of Labour is up to at Hartebeestpoort and Doornkop. They allow a tyro and an amateur like the Minister of Labour to step in where we have an efficient staff in the Lands Department to deal with this.

Our farmer from Greyville!

It is a costly thing having “the farmer from Greyville” running land settlement in this country. Will the Minister of Lands tell us whether there is any likelihood of this anomalous position coming to an end?

In reply to the hon. member for Port Elizabeth (Central) (Col. D. Reitz), with regard to purchases under Section 11, he enquired whether there was a movement of the rural population towards the north. It seems that that is the case, and I notice in the applications I received that they are very numerous from the Orange Free State for buying land in the Transvaal, and even applications from the Cape. The number of applications received were: Transvaal 957, Orange Free State 376, Cape 468, and Natal 71. Of the whole number of applications received from all over the Union, the percentage in the Transvaal was 52, Orange Free State 20, Cape 25, and Natal 4. The approvals were: Transvaal 214. Orange Free State 98, Cape 114, and Natal 21. We try to keep the percentages amongst the various provinces on a fair and equitable basis. Of the applications which were received and which were approved of, the percentages were: Transvaal 22, Orange Free State 26, Cape 24, and Natal 30.

When you take 957 applications, is that the number of individuals applying?

The individual number of applications received.

How conies it that with only 22 per cent. with regard to the Transvaal the amount is £299,000?

But 957 applications were received.

I have been informed there were selections in the Orange Free State.

The money spent was: Transvaal £220,000, Orange Free State £135,000, Cape £113,000 (It is a little more now—about £120,000)—and Natal £28,000. From this it would appear there is a gradual movement of people up north. In reply also to the hon. member for Albany (Mr. Struben), who has put practically the same question as the hon. member for Port Elizabeth (Central) did, with regard to Hartebeestpoort, I must say that the hon. member for Albany is wrong. There are not four, but three, departments. The Irrigation Department controls irrigation works. The Agricultural Department has a small experimental plot, and such experimental plots are run in every part of the Union by the Agricultural Department. There are two departments—Lands and Labour. The Irrigation Department controls, not the land, but irrigation works. On the right bank of the river there are probationary settlements, and a little lower down I have given out land under Section 7 of the Act where people pay one-tenth of the purchase price at once. Lower down there are a number of lessees. They were there when my horn friend was in office, and they are still there. On the left bank the Labour Department has several farms. The Minister of Labour approached the Government at the time the works at Hartebeestpoort were petering out. He had to make provision for these people, and there was a kind of sorting station. There were a number of unemployed, and the Labour Department did not know what to do with them. The idea was to sort these people out for any place where employment might offer. Later on the Minister of Labour started an extension scheme, and got an option from Mr. Jacobs at Zandfontein. That might be considered overlapping—the sorting station is not. He must have a place like that, because otherwise where is he going to keep these people in the meantime? At Zandfontein they had to work on condition that their profits were banked for them, and if they had sufficient to buy land they had to come to me with a certificate, and when they were suitable they could buy land under the Land Settlement Act. Zandfontein will be enquired into, for there is a possibility of the matter being arranged differently. I do not want to go further into that now, but that is the position as it stands at present. Should it be decided that the Department of Lands should look after these people, the Labour Department would have only a sorting station, which it is essential it should have. The hon. member for Albany (Mr. Struben) also enquired whether they could get the land on which they had made improvements and on which they made a living. The idea at first was to train people there and then send them to some other place, but I found I had no other suitable place. They are being trained under irrigation conditions, and it is difficult to find another place where they could follow the same pursuits. They also made strong representations to me, saying that they had lived there for years, had improved the place and did not like to be shifted. Hon. members can understand it is a strong incentive if a man can keep his plot, he makes improvements; if not, he works perfunctorily. The moment they pass out they get a plot on which they live. I have started a probationary settlement at Olifants River, and if the Buchuberg scheme on the Orange River proves feasible, one may be established there. If it be possible—I do not say it is—and if it be feasible to train them in the Umfolosi Valley, that would be a suitable probationers’ place to grow sugar. I think Hartebeestpoort is one of the best schemes in the country, if the cost would not be prohibitive. I have been over the place myself. The hon. member for Albany said he also saw natives working there, and that surprised him. It might have been quite accidentally. These people have to do the work themselves, and I also found them doing so. Those who do not work properly and do not show the necessary intelligence, or inclination, to farm their plots; if they do not do everything they can, I say, I cannot keep you here,” and eight had to move on. I have a committee of control there with a superintendent, who make a report to me. They told me that these people should quit. As far as probationary schemes are concerned, they are very extensive—you have to build the houses, and there are fencing, ploughing and so forth; it costs quite a lot of money; but this is really a successful settlement. These people have become quite efficient because they are under daily supervision. The first lot numbered 60 the first year, and 38 have been passed out. I think fully 90 per cent. of them will succeed as settlers. They were “down and outs” and some of them knew nothing about farming. If we could deal with all our settlements on these lines we should have far greater success, but unfortunately it costs a lot of money. As soon as the Committee reported that these settlers were ready to pass out we drew up a special kind of contract and we retain much more supervision over them than we do over ordinary settlers.

What is going on at Doornkop?

I know nothing about that. The hon. member for Illovo (Mr. Marwick) wants to saddle me with the control of immigration. But I have nothing to do with the man who comes here to start a shop.

You might weed them out.

We have to do an immense amount of detail work in the department, and I have suggested to the Public Service Commission decentralization by having a separate office in Cape Town similar to the one we have in Natal. The powers of those branch offices, however, will have to be limited, as it would be very risky to allow a minor official to make allotments of land. Parliament is also responsible for that. I remember that my predecessor was hauled over the coals by the Select Committee on Crown Lands for allotting a small piece of ground in Zoutpansberg. In the Cape the Minister is fenced in with so much wire that he cannot move; either they are very suspicious in the Cape or they must have had very funny Ministers. I administer something like 189 laws, but now practically all allotments take place under the Land Settlement Act.

You could revise those Cape Acts.

Even if you did, the complication would remain, as the land has been allotted under certain conditions. I defy anyone to mention a single speech in which I made one single promise. I never made any election promises whatsoever.

Some of your colleagues did.

Your colleagues foisted the applicants for land on to you.

I don’t think my colleagues are guilty, either. As to the point raised by the hon. member for Rondebosch (Mr. Close), under the land laws a person is allotted a farm provided he has sufficient capital and experience to work it properly. When probationers are passed out as settlers I have to make advances to them for the purchase of stock. I deal only with settlers—people who have got land from the Government. The distribution of the seed is dealt with by the Agricultural Department. As I have replied to all the points, I hope the Committee will now allow the vote to go through.

The Minister talks about probationers who have no land’ or capital, and who receive assistance from the Government. That is a form of administering relief. The Auditor-General, in paragraph 52 of his annual report, deals with the lack of system in the estimates, and remarks—

The subject of expenditure would be as detailed in the estimates, but the object of expenditure would, in this case, be the broad heading of poor relief. How is the House to know what is being spent on poor relief under the present system? The Minister is one of the half-dozen Ministers referred to by the Auditor-General. The committee ought to consider the recommendation of the Auditor-General which are that the estimates should be so framed that the House should know what money it is voting for a particular object, say for poor relief. The Auditor-General was speaking from the point of view of the ability of Parliament to check expenditure, and the Minister of Lands comes along and gives us a pleasant series of answers, but we do not get any forrdaer with this particular case. I believe there is a far greater amount of serious unemployment of a particular character to-day than there has been for a long time past, but it is not as vocal as it used to be. I believe from my own small experience there is more genuine and serious distress amongst a large class of people in the country than for a long time. I want to very much probe into the question of how far this relief is efficacious in the country.

Amendment proposed by Col. D. Reitz put and negatived.

Vote, as printed, put and agreed to.

On Vote 34, “Deeds,” £50,418,

I would like to know what was the final upshot of the enquiry about alleged favouritism on the part of officials.

I laid the papers on the Table. The officials were exonerated of all blame by the magistrate, who said there was nothing in it.

Vote put and agreed to.

On Vote 35, “Surveys,” £67,054,

In the report of the Auditor-General there is mention of the survey of certain farms in the Piet Retief district. The survey went a certain way and £2,000 was spent when it was discovered the soil was not suitable. I ask the Minister why didn’t he enquire into this matter before the survey? It is a dead loss; it is unproductive expenditure. I also want to ask the hon. Minister what he means by “Government surveys” on page 176, A 3, an increase from £6,000 to £8,000.

As far as these farms are concerned, the money is not all lost. When we came into office there was a large glamour over Zululand, where people thought they could become rich by growing cotton, and it was proposed to establish a cotton growing settlement. I sent a member of the Labour Advisory Council to inspect certain parts of the country, and he thought it was a suitable place. We started surveying, but I stopped it, because I found it was unsuitable. The money was not lost, because the land had to be surveyed and cut up into farms of from 500 to 600 morgen, which will be given out under the Land Settlement Act. There is a certain loss, but it is nothing like £2,000. With regard to the increase from six to eight thousand pounds, I had to survey these lands on account of the platinum business in the Transvaal. Last year since this boom started, I was required to make a lot of surveys before the Government could proclaim it.

Vote put and agreed to.

On Vote 36, “Irrigation,” £196,886,

I have been seriously perturbed at the reports I have heard of a proposal on the part of the Minister to tenter into an agreement with the Pretoria municipality in regard to water from the Hartebeestpoort dam. The dam cost, for works alone, apart from land and development, at least one and a quarter millions. It was one of the most costly dams ever built in this country, and I have beard that it is proposed to enter into this agreement giving the municipality of Pretoria the right to take a daily supply of four to six million gallons of water from that dam.

I want to help the hon. member. Can he give me an item on which he can get in?

The whole administration of the Irrigation Department is concerned. There are items on page 185.

The question of policy has been discussed on the Minister’s salary. Give me an item.

It is a question of administration, and not of policy. L1 contains the whole administration of Hartebeestpoort, and if the whole utility of this dam is to be interfered with by this water being deflected for the use of Pretoria—

The hon. member must give me an item. I want to help him.

I appreciate your benevolent intention, sir. The whole of L 1, the engineer, draughtsman, storekeeper and other salaries are down, and if the water is to be deflected to Pretoria it means we are paying these salaries for the benefit of Pretoria, and I want the matter discussed before it goes further.

I cannot allow the hon. member to discuss it. I am sorry. Cannot the hon. member confine himself to questions to the Minister?

Yes, I was just telling the Minister what I had heard, and what I have heard is that an agreement is about to be entered into with the municipality of Pretoria whereby that municipality is to be allowed to take a daily supply of from four to six million gallons of water, and for this priceless privilege the municipality has to pay a capital sum of £150,000. in return for which it will be able to draw this water in perpetuity. Is it true? If so, why are we doing it? Having spent State money, why do we sacrifice such rights for such a small sum as £150,000? Is it allied to the Iron and Steel Bill which met an unhappy fate in another place yesterday? While the Minister is replying, I will try and find some item on which I can refer to it.

I should like to ask a few questions. A short while ago the Minister, in reply to a question, said that the Irrigation Commission had visited and made reports about certain schemes. The Minister said that in certain cases he intended to adopt the recommendations of the commission. I should like to know when the reports will be laid on the Table, and also to have more or less of a resume of the recommendations of the commission with regard to the scheme, and what has already been carried out. I understand that the Minister said that the Mortimer scheme, and in general the scheme along the Fish River, had already been visited by the commission. I should like to know if that is so, and whether it is true that the people on the Mortimer scheme have received notice to pay up their taxes in full within 30 days. I want to point out to him that it is a little hard, and I should like to know if that is the recommendation of the Irrigation Commission. The House must remember that the ground which the settlers were given there was undeveloped,, that drought prevailed, and that the time they were given to pay was very short. I understand that there was considerable unrest among the people, and that a deputation has already waited upon the Minister. I should like to urge the Minister not to press the people, especially on account of the drought prevailing there. In that way they will be given another opportunity. I should like to know what the recommendations of the Irrigation Commission actually are in connection with that scheme and, in connection with the whole scheme along the Fish River. Then I feel that it would be very desirable to establish a demonstration centre in that area. There has already been great development, and the settlers are farming on small pieces of ground so that it is of great importance for them to learn how to farm in the best way. The Government has already spent large sums of money on Arthur’s Lake and Grasmere, and it will, therefore, be desirable to have a better system of farming, so that the schemes may pay, and the people make a success of their work. We see that provision is made in the estimates for the salaries of engineers, and there is no doubt the salaries are very small. Enormous sums of money have already been spent on irrigation schemes, and I think it would be desirable to increase the salaries of the engineers. They are in a very difficult position to-day, because it is difficult for engineers to do private practice. The State does work fairly cheaply for people so that competition is strong. The result is that we lose the services of the best engineers because they are attracted to other countries. That is not right, because these people have passed very stiff examinations and have to do very responsible work. If their salaries are compared with those of other technical officials it will be seen that they are very small. Provision is also made for temporary assistant engineers, and I should like to know from the Minister what work they do, and the reason why they are being temporarily employed. Then there is another matter which has occasioned considerable talk in the drought-stricken midland districts. It is felt that the Government should assist in seeing what value there is in the rain-making theory, so that it can be properly tested. The Minister would be surprised if he knew how strongly the farmers feel that Mr. Hall should be given the chance to put his theories to the proof.

He can make his fortune if he can make rain.

He can make his fortune, but if his theory is practicable, then he will make a fortune of the South African farmers. I cannot see why a small sum of money cannot be spent in testing his theory, because it seems to me there is something in it. He says that when there are clouds then some material or sand can be thrown on the clouds so that the rain descends.

The question of rainfall does not come under this vote.

Yes, it does come under it, because I understand that meteorology comes under it. I know the Minister objects, but I do not know whether his objections are financial or religious. What I am mentioning here is nothing strange, because the Agricultural Union took a resolution on these lines to ask the Minister to assist Mr. Hall and to discuss the whole matter with the heads of the Meteorological Department and Mr. Hall. Even if the Minister cannot assist then he can surely grant the interview. I want to ask him not to throw cold water on the matter. The clouds often come up well, and it looks as if it were going to rain, but the clouds disappear. We know that when the ground is damp or trees are present then it contributes to the fall of rain, and Mr. Hall’s hypothesis is that the throwing of material or sand above the clouds may make the rain descend.

I do not know if you have further considered the ruling that you gave a few moments ago, but it does seem to me if I may say so with respect, to be an extraordinary state of affairs if, on the Vote for Irrigation, we cannot discuss an agreement by which it is proposed to deflect a large proportion of the capacity of a Government-built dam to municipal purposes. It does seem to me to be a most unfortunate state of affairs. You asked me if I could show you any particular item under which that could be done. I have already referred you to the whole of L1, which provides for salaries, wages and allowances paid for the administration of this particular dam. Then there is under B1 the salary of the director of irrigation, who, I understand, has made certain reports in connection with this proposed scheme. If that is not wide enough to cover not only questions but to allow me to discuss the proposed scheme, when we hear the details from the Minister, then surely a most unfortunate state of affairs will arise in regard to the work of this House in Committee.

The hon. member knows and the Committee knows that it has been the rule for many years and held by many Speakers that only administrative details can be discussed In Committee of Supply.

Precisely, this is an administrative detail.

I want to help the hon. member, if he can only show me the item.

The heading “irrigation” and the whole of sub-item L1 seem to me to deal with the whole thing.

If the Minister’s salary came in it would be a different thing, but, unfortunately for the hon. member, it does not.

I do not want to discuss the general policy; I only want to discuss, if I am allowed to do so, a particular case. When the flag-wagging episode on the Nationalist benches has stopped, I will get back to my point. It seems to me that an important point of procedure arises here. The State spends annually a very large sum in the administration of this particular dam presumably in order to supply the water of that dam for the purposes laid down by the Act of Parliament which we passed when we voted the money to build the dam. If in the administration of that dam, it is now proposed by the Minister to deflect a portion of the water to a purpose not contemplated in the Act when it was passed, and for some purpose entirely extraneous to that for which the money was voted, then a most unfortunate state of affairs arises

You are only delaying the House. Stop talking nonsense.

May I suggest to the hon. member that under L3 there may be a certain amount of depreciation of equipment if this thing is carried out.

Clutching at that straw I will now, with your indulgence, and assuming the facts I have mentioned are substantially correct, proceed to express my alarm at this proposal. I think it is the very gravest error of judgment that could possibly be committed, and one that will very gravely affect the future of irrigation in this country if, after having built dams in this country for irrigation purposes, we allow that water to be deflected to municipal purposes. It hits two classes of persons unfairly. It hits the taxpayer because he has been taxed for years to provide the interest on the Hartebeestpoort dam in the hope that the farming of the country would ultimately benefit, and the second class of person presumably are the owners of land below the dam, who probably gave their consent or sold their land for the purpose for which that dam was constituted. If I am right in believing that the municipality will get a guaranteed 4 to 6,000,000 gallons of water a day, what is going to happen when this dam runs low? I saw that dam six months ago and it was very low indeed. What is going to happen? I suggest a very wrong precedent is being established. Then, of course, there is the price. For Pretoria to get a guaranteed water supply of 4 to 6,000,000 gallons a day for this paltry sum seems absurd.

I will answer at once to see whether I cannot remove the difficulties of the hon. member for Bezuidenhout (Mr. Blackwell). He is much concerned about the expensive dam that is being built and that the interests of the farmers will be injured if the Municipality of Pretoria takes water from it. The hon. member is a lawyer and he knows that if the Government entered into a contract with the municipality it would have first to come to Parliament to get the law altered because there is already an Act in connection with the dam so that new legislation will be necessary for the purpose. I will tell the hon. member what happened. The Town Council of Pretoria approached my predecessor and commenced negotiations with reference to getting water from the dam. When I took over I said that I would not enter into such a contract before the Irrigation Commission had made a thorough investigation and a survey to see if there was enough water for the farmers under the scheme, and if there would be any surplus. I said that I would only consider the request of the Town Council if there was more than enough water. Then it would be fair to sell it to the municipality. I made no promise to the municipality or anyone. After the whole matter is enquired into we shall come to Parliament and submit the Commission’s report before entering into the contract.

It will be no good if you face us with a completed contract.

No, before the contract is entered into we will come to Parliament and report what application has been made and what quantity of water there is. I feel that the Municipality of Pretoria should get water if there is enough, but I also feel that we must put the matter before Parliament.

Has the contract not yet been signed?

No, there is no contract as yet. There has been nothing beyond preliminary negotiations.

The hon. member has unnecessarily been sleeping badly.

I can assure the hon. member that no contract has yet been entered into with regard to the water. The hon. member will have seen in the newspapers in October that I refused to go further into the matter before the enquiry was made, and the matter still rests there. The hon. member for Cradock (Mr. G. C. van Heerden) asked me a few questions, firstly with reference to the investigating of irrigation schemes by the Irrigation Commission, and he asked when the report would be laid on the Table. The hon. member will see that the Act passed last year creating the commission provides that a report must be made after the commission has been in existence a year. It is not yet a year, and the report will therefore be laid on the Table during the next Parliamentary session. The commission has already examined certain schemes, and we will submit the report to Parliament next year for approval or disapproval. I cannot tell the hon. member what the report contains before it is laid on the Table. Then he asked me about the £34,500 spent on the Mortimer scheme and requested that the people on it should be assisted. These people have got much relief since 1920 and out of the amounts which have been paid annually the hon. member will see that the Government has only claimed a part of the sum to which it was entitled. The people have thus received assistance for a full period of six years, from 1920 to 1926. Now we are having difficulties with the Act. The hon. member is sorry for those people, but I did not make the law. If I take no steps against them then I wonder what the hon. member for Cape Town (Central) (Mr. Jagger) will say about it next year? In view of the drought I agree with what the hon. member has said and I am keeping the matter in view. I shall see what can still be done before the end of the session.

I shall be very glad.

Then the hon. member asked for a demonstration centre along the Fish river. It is impossible to have such a farm in connection with every irrigation scheme in the country. I wonder what the position would be if we did that?

It would pay.

The hon. member mentioned the salaries of engineers, and I am surprised at it because an attack is always made on account of our spending so much money. The hon. member surely knows that the salaries of those officials and of all public servants are fixed by the Public Service Commission. Those salaries have already been fixed for years, and I am not going to meddle with them. If I raised the salaries then the hon. member for Cape Town (Central) …

The Minister of Finance is there to keep you in check.

If all the Ministers press him then he will have to give in. We are jointly responsible and I can say that we shall not do it. The hon. member also asked a question about the temporary assistant engineers. The position is that there is sometimes more work than usual, and that temporary men have to be employed who are subsequently, when there is little work, no longer required.

Are these mostly young men just out of college?

Not always. Certain persons are sometimes employed to do temporary work at certain places and if it appears that if in one of the divisions there is more work than the engineer can manage then it is necessary to appoint a temporary man until permission can be obtained from Parliament to make a permanent appointment. Then the hon. member asked something about rain making. He knows my attitude. There are older countries than South Africa, e.g. America, where there are many rainmakers, hut in America, according to my information, they have completely abandoned the idea and will have nothing more to do with it because it was a failure. I think the hon. member for Fort Beaufort (Sir Thomas Smartt) also had something to do with Mr. Hall once, but that he also would not believe in rain making and was not prepared to spend anymore public money on it.

Why do you not give him a chance?

I am not prepared to spend more public money on it. If it is a fact that there are many people who want an experiment, who are interested in it, then they can all contribute £5 and with a few hundred pounds the experiments can be made. I shall not do it.

Will you make an aeroplane available?

If they find the money for the purpose I shall consider it, but I have also had considerable experience of Mr. Hall and my department has made full investigation in connection with the matter. There was another conference last year but it is a matter which requires years of observation and I am not prepared to take the step proposed by the hon. member.

I am very glad to hear the reply of my hon. friend to the question put by the hon. member for Bezuidenhout (Mr. Blackwell), because he had the information that the contract was on the point of being signed.

I regret that, after hearing what the hon. Minister said, I cannot allow this; first, as a question of policy and, secondly, as legislation.

I do not know whether this would be considered a matter of policy, but I do think that the time has come when the Irrigation Department should be transferred back to the Lands Department. Irrigation is the hand-maiden of land settlement, and vice versa. The two are closely interlocked. For the last two years irrigation has been no ones darling. For some years it was under the Minister of Justice, who does not understand anything about irrigation anyway. Take Votes L and M.

I have no objection.

I am quite sure the Minister has no objection. No one seems to object. It seems to be a sort of circumlocution department.

The hon. member is now discussing policy.

Take the Olifants River —it is essentially a land settlement. The ground has been cut up and the land purchased by the Lands Department. Why should the country have another department spending money in what is essentially a Lands Department matter? I think that the whole committee agrees that irrigation should be under Lands.

I am sorry; I cannot allow this discussion to go on.

I bow to your ruling.

Is it competent for us under C (1), Professional Advisory Services, to discuss the advice that has been tendered to the Minister, with regard to Hartebeestpoort water? The Minister said they were going to see that they had all the water that they wanted, and if there was more than was required they would make a contract with Pretoria.

The hon. member cannot discuss that; a contract would need legislation.

I am discussing whether I can criticize the advice given to the Minister on this matter. We are now discussing the payment for these gentlemen who gave advice.

I know it is a question of public interest, and I am doing my best to see if I can let him through.

We acknowledge, Mr. Chairman, that you always try, as far as the rules allow; to give an hon. member the right of discussing a matter. Under L (1), Maintenance of Irrigation Works at Hartebeestpoort, we are asked to spend £10,800. Is it not competent, before hon. members vote this money, to discuss whether this shall be devoted to the purpose to which my hon. friend refers? If that is not sufficient, I draw your attention to Vote 1—Director of Irrigation. No one appreciates his services more than I do. He is the technical officer who reports to the Minister, and we have a right to know whether any reports have been sent in, whether the Irrigation Department, through the Minister has not gone into the question, and whether he has not had a report from the Director what the position would be, qua water, for the remaining lands. I do not think that is a question of policy. We have the right to ask the Minister, before we vote money, what the position is.

I find here that 40 rulings have been given in one session on this particular point. So hon. members see how difficult it is, and the only way I think hon. members can discuss it is the depreciation that may take place at Hartebeestpoort.

May we not discuss the matter on the salary of the Irrigation Commission and give our point of view so that it may be passed on to the commission when it is considering this matter?

I have shown the hon. member what he can do, but he must not forget that legislation will be required to legalize the contract.

I was told that the agreement with the Pretoria Municipality is actually cut and dried. It is no use for the Minister to say that it will be then submitted to Parliament, for if Government signs an agreement and presents it to this House for ratification it will not lightly be set aside, and it then will become a question of confidence. I wish to warn the Minister how careful he should be. He says that the claims of farmers will come first, and that only in regard to the surplus water will Pretoria benefit. Is Pretoria to be told that when the Government has surplus water it can have it? If that is so there would not be half the objection that there would be to an agreement that Pretoria could take a certain amount of water every day of the year; in other words that it would receive priority. In that case who is to suffer during a drought? If, however, the agreement is that Pretoria is to have only surplus water then the Minister will make a good bargain. Pretoria is proposing to pay a capital sum for a perpetual right to obtain water, and it would be hardly likely to pay that only for surplus water which Government may from time to time let them have. I understand that if Pretoria pays a capital sum it will make it a partner in the dam. If that is so most of us will look with a very jealous eye on Government parting with State assets in that way.

I asked the Minister a question in connection with the Kafirkuils river scheme. [No quorum.] Does the Minister know that the man who was supervising the sluits there is the same man that had the supervision of the settlement sluits in the past, and that the man was dismissed? I should like to know who has the supervision now. Then I want to ask the Minister if the farmers who now pay 2s. 6d. a morgen run the risk of having to pay more later, whether the Minister has the right of ever demanding more.

Of course.

I should like to know if this is one of the cases of an agreement made by the Minister of Irrigation of the late Government where the maximum was 10s. Then I should like to know how much the income is per annum, and what it costs to maintain the sluits annually.

Will the Minister give an undertaking that in order to supply water to Pretoria or any other municipality, he will not decrease the quantity of land under irrigation?

I would like to point out to the Minister that the essential difference between a supply of water to a municipality like Pretoria and the use of it for ordinary irrigation purposes is that it must be a daily supply, and when the drought comes, as it will in the ordinary course of events, the irrigators will suffer, but the municipality of Pretoria must insist upon getting its supply.

It’s the thin end of the wedge.

The irrigators are bound to suffer and the municipality gets the better of it. You cannot get out of supplying Pretoria if you can get out of supplying the irrigators. It is purely with the idea of giving a warning in this regard that the matter is brought forward this evening. Then I want to raise another question under H.1—loss on boring to farmers and lessees, £25,000, an increase of £13,500 over last year. The charge for boring is £5 per diem, whereas the cost is £6 5s., and I understand this £25,000 is to make up the losses on boring. I admit the necessity of encouraging boring and of doing all you can in that direction, but to go on boring below cost should only be done in cases where the boring is not successful. If the farmer gets a successful borehole on his place which gives a good supply of water, he can well afford to pay the cost, because the value of the farm and the general productiveness is increased thereby. I do not mind charging the reduced price if nothing comes of the boring. I want also to ask about the Kaffir Kuils River and why we spend £250. To maintain the irrigation works, I presume. And what is this soil survey, for which you have to provide £2,000?

I wish it was five times as much.

It is a new vote, and we ought to have some explanation of it. Then, with regard to the hydrographic survey on page 82, they have put down 31 labourers, temporary and native, and 62 of them are quite new. Perhaps the Minister will give an explanation of that. Then I want to ask, with regard to administration of Acts, 184.K.2., subsistence and transport. Subsistence, motor transport and general transport are all increased, a total increase of £500. Perhaps the Minister will give an explanation with regard to that.

I want to thank the Minister. I understand he is prepared to continue relieving the people on the Mortimer scheme during the present year. Did I understand correctly that the Minister intends introducing legislation in the matter this year. I know that there is an Act, and that, according to it, the Minister has to give notice to the people to pay up. Many mistakes were made in connection with irrigation works, and that is why a commission was appointed to, first of all, investigate such cases. I should like to know whether the people on whom there are many dependents will still be given relief by legislation this year. The Minister admits that, as the result of drought, the position is difficult, and I am anxious to be quite certain on the point. I want to ask the Minister if it will be possible for the Irrigation Commission to visit Vlerkpoort scheme between Tarkastad and Cradock. The Lewis Commission visited the scheme years ago and made a report which shows that the scheme is not intended to catch water, but only for irrigation purposes. It also appears from it that a success has not actually been made of the scheme. The commission has made certain recommendations but I feel it is necessary for further relief to be given. The people are already heavily taxed to-day, but there is no chance of the scheme paying. I may say that the people have paid their water rates up to date, but they do not get value for them. They feel strongly that further relief should be given, and I hope that the Irrigation Commission will soon go there to investigate. The Minister said that a Bill would be introduced next year to give effect to the recommendations of the commission on the whole system in the country, so that the scheme can be put on a proper business footing, and now I want to ask that this scheme shall be dealt with this year. The chairman of the commission told me that he would try to go there, and I hope the Minister will assist in getting the commission there as soon as possible.

I am very glad to see that more provision is made this year than in former years for loss on water boring. I do not know what this actually means, and whether the Minister will listen to our cry from the north-west to make the boring a little cheaper to farmers. If it does mean that, then the whole of the north-west will be very thankful to the Government. We know that there is a loss in boring, but we argue that as the Government are annually expending money to improve the breed of stock in the country by way of scab inspectors and other expenditure, it is just as necessary to assist the people in getting water. The boring is often terribly deep, sometimes 350 feet, and then often there is no proper supply of water obtained. The proverb, “Cast your bread on the waters, and you will get it back after many days,” is very true in this case, for if further boring is done then thousands and thousands of sheep will be saved in times of drought, and it will not be necessary to trek so soon. There is a wonderful power of endurance in the north-west, because the animals can be kept alive even for two years. The water, however, gives up and the animals die rather from lack of water than from lack of food. Even if it costs hundreds of thousands of pounds to make water the expenditure will be got back later.

I think there is a great deal in what my hon. friend says in regard to the boring, but I am perfectly certain that the hon. gentleman opposite and everybody who takes an interest in this matter will agree with me that farmers who get water will be only too willing to pay for it, but there are many cases and cases in which six or seven bores have been put down on one farm to a considerable depth and every one of them drew a blank. If my hon. friend will devise a scheme whereby you will pay proportionately to the extent to which you find water and make provision for a very small charge to people who do not find water, then he will be conferring a very great benefit on the country, and I am perfectly certain that farmers who are using Government drills will be only too anxious to do business on that basis. I know many cases where men who could ill afford it and who were driven to it by necessity owing to such times as we have lately passed through, have put down borehole after borehole and been unable to get water, and it was a very difficult thing for those men to meet the charges that are now made for the Government drills, whereas other people who were successful in finding water which has enhanced the value of their farms very largely, would, I am sure, not mind paying very much more than they do. These losses on the boring last year and in previous years have been more than made up by the increased development of the country which only the opening of subterranean waters has made possible. There are large areas in this country where, without Government assistance in pioneer drilling, it would be utterly impossible to get the pioneer farmer to establish farming on any solid basis. I am one of those who regret that our policy in the past was not to spend a great deal more on boring and that is in connection with the Government lands, before they were leased or sold, that the State should have put down trial boreholes and proved the possibility of underground supplies, thereby making an assured living to the men who took up the ground and giving the Government where water was found a much better price than they are getting at the present moment. But there is a tremendous difficulty in this dry veld, the difficulty of getting fuel and water to the engines of the boring machines for the purpose of starting operations, and I would be very glad if the Minister would tell me whether there is not a considerable advantage in using internal combustion engines instead of the ordinary steam engine in many of the drier areas of the country. Perhaps the Minister will tell us how many of the newer drills are being worked by internal combustion engines and if they are working as satisfactorily as the ordinary steam engines. In connection with Hartebeestpoort, perhaps the Minister will also give us information whether the reports of the Director of Irrigation and his technical officers are not of such a character as to show that the area of irrigable land that has been scheduled under the Hartebeestpoort dam is not reported upon as being more than the ordinary volume of water from year to year stored in that dam is able to sufficiently irrigate. If such is the condition of affairs, then there is no doubt there is a great deal in what the hon. member for Bezuidenhout (Mr. Blackwell) and the hon. member for Cape Town (Central) (Mr. Jagger) and others have said, that you must be extremely careful in connection with those people whose land has been placed under the dam and to whom the supply of water is the life blood so far as farming operations are concerned, that you do not without the fullest investigation shorten their supply at the present time and make many of these holdings in dry seasons eventually become high and dry. I have never known an irrigation scheme proposed when people did not say there was more water than they could possibly use, but when the dry year copies down it is generally found that you have scheduled a great deal more land than the water can supply. As the majority of that land belongs to the State, it would be advisable to get the Irrigation Commission to go into the whole question and see whether it would not be advisable for the Government to take the bold course and cut out a certain portion of that land and make it non-riparian so that there would be a sufficient volume of water for the land which settlers and others are cultivating at the present time. In connection with Sunday’s River there is a certain area there, the property of the State, that has not yet been developed, and I would say to my hon. friend that it would be advisable also to cut that area out so that there will be an assurance of a larger supply of water for that portion of the valley which is being developed at the present time. The Government are the owners of that land. In the lower reaches there is a certain area which is very difficult to get under irrigation, and if my hon. friend would agree to have that portion cut out it would be a very great advantage to the people who are doing a great deal to develop what I consider an extremely valuable portion of the country, especially so far as the growing of citrus fruits is concerned.

It is a very important point which the hon. member for Fort Beaufort (Sir Thomas Smartt) has raised with reference to irrigation schemes. He recommends that the part of the scheme along the Sundays River for which there is no water, and which is no good should be cut out, so that the people can get more water. The Irrigation Commission is going into the matter and this is the way in which the investigation is being made. They are all matters which will be brought up during the next session and will be referred to a select committee for a recommendation to the House. Pieces of ground which must be cut out and what must be done with the rest will then be reported upon. The hon. members for Fort Beaufort, Bezuidenhout (Mr. Blackwell) and for Cape Town (Central) (Mr. Jagger) have again spoken about the Hartebeestpoort dam. I have already explained to the House that there were negotiations between my predecessor and the town council of Pretoria, but that no contract has been signed. As soon as I took over I immediately notified the council that I was not prepared to introduce legislation in Parliament and to ask that water should be given to Pretoria before the Irrigation Commission had enquired into the quantity of water. When the report is made that there is enough water for the farmers and that there is a surplus of water and when the report has been carefully considered then Parliament will be approached for approval. The scheme was built under a special Act, and water cannot be given to the municipality without the authority of Parliament. It is unnecessary to be anxious about the matter, and I can assure the hon. member for Bezuidenhout that there is nothing behind it. The hon. member for Fort Beaufort, together with the hon. members for Cape Town (Central) and for Gordonia (Mr. J. H. Conradie) have raised the question of boring. The hon. member for Cape Town (Central) is concerned about the loss of £25,000 on boring, but we always hear that we should be so concerned about the farmers and that things are so hard for them and that their life is a difficult one. That losses are suffered, comes in again more than twice because the farmers suffer less loss if they have water on their farms. It is better to bore even if there are losses than to leave the position as it is. I am very glad that the hon. member for Fort Beaufort has raised the question of dry bore-holes. The Government has decided to lay down that if anyone has boring done without result or with less than 1,440 gallons of water he will only pay £2 10s. per day for the first 20 days, i.e., £50 per cent. less than anyone who gets water and has to pay £5 per day for the first 20 days. We are therefore meeting the farmers who do not find water and that is what the hon. member for Fort Beaufort wants.

Are these new conditions?

They came into operation on the 1st of April. Then the hon. member for Fort Beaufort asked me if it was not easier to use steam engines in the areas where it was dry and where it was difficult to get petrol. We have no petrol engines at the moment and only a few paraffin engines and we are trying to do the other boring in the same way. We are doing this gradually.

They are much lighter to transport.

Yes, and much easier because so much water and fuel is not required. Then the hon. member for Cape Town (Central) (Mr. Jagger) spoke about allowances and asked why in certain cases they were increased. It appeared that the vote had been put too low, and that the allowances were not adequate. The hon. member for Cradock (Mr. G. C. van Heerden) wants to have my assurance that something must be done for the people on the Mortimer scheme. According to law I cannot grant any further time, but I am consulting with the Minister of Finance to introduce legislation this session to empower me in special cases to grant further extensions. With regard to the visit of the Irrigation Commission, I hope that they will still be able to visit most of the schemes this year and that their report will be laid on the Table next year.

What is the position in connection with the Hartebeestpoort and Lake Arthur dams? The Minister sent the Director of Irrigation to the Irrigation Congress at Port Elizabeth to lay before the congress certain proposals intended to bring to an end the disputes that unfortunately exist between upper and lower riparian proprietors. The congress adopted a series of resolutions with a view to preventing, as far as possible, the enormous expense to which farmers and irrigators are put when they bring their cases before the irrigation court. It was then hoped that litigation of this nature would terminate, I understand that that is not the case. Is there any prospect of the Minister getting regulations passed through Parliament this session which would save farmers thousands and thousands of pounds. We are voting the salary of the water court judge. I believe that salary is very well earned, but no matter how capable the judge is it will be far better for the farmers to come to an agreement than to spend their money in bring their cases before the water court. The water court will require a good deal of consideration with regard to the amount of money it is costing farmers in this country because the moment you get into a water court case, what with witnesses and legal charges, the irrigators are paying a huge sum of money which very few can afford and I ask the Minister if there is no hope at Grassridge and Lake Arthur of going forward with these proposals to make it unnecessary for the farmers to spend such large amounts of money to protect their own rights. I was thunderstruck when I found the unanimity with which the irrigators adopted these proposals because they said that this, at any rate, would make a fair settlement between the upper and lower proprietors. Why my hon. friend hesitates to introduce this into the House instead of waiting to introduce a full amendment of the Irrigation Act which will take a long time, I cannot understand. If he introduces this now it would pass through immediately and would earn the undying gratitude of those who take a deep interest in irrigation. We would rather put our money in the development of irrigation resources in the country than squander a great deal in the future, as in the past, in courts of law.

I would like to reinforce those remarks and to point out that the great bulk of the costs do not go to a particular profession. A decision has just been given which raises the question in a concrete form. In one of the midland cases a learned judge gave a lengthy judgment, and, at the end, the decision was that he was bound by a previous decision of a previous eminent water court judge, Mr. Justice de Villiers. The whole of his judgment was to show that if there had not been this previous decision he would have given a judgment in the opposite way. The effect of that decision was that notices would have to be given to every proprietor down to the sea. The search which would be necessary in the Deeds Office to find out who were the persons the notices must be given to, would run into thousands of pounds and would mean a long delay, and would not result in the getting of the notices to all the people who, technically, the notice ought to reach. We of a particular profession want the Irrigation Act carried out in the best way possible, and to make it as cheap as possible for the people to settle their rights without going to litigation. They cannot settle their rights without going to litigation, and the difficulty is to settle the rights of people in such a way that you reconcile their rights with those of other people who are not parties. That is why all these expenses are incurred. It is a matter of the most extreme moment, and the Minister, of course, has two courses, as far as the present position is concerned, to make up his mind, but as far as litigation is concerned to avoid the future occurrence of a similar thing. There is a great need for some simplified enactment.

Order! The hon. member must not discuss legislation.

I am very glad that I have been able to get as far as I have done. This difficulty shows the necessity for an alteration of the rules of procedure of this House, because, take this particular case, we have the privilege of being answered on this vote by the Minister of Agriculture, but if you look at page 10 of the abstract of the votes, you will see that it is brought under the Minister of Justice. How is an unfortunate Opposition member to know which Minister he has to try and dock of part of his hard-earned salary? I do not know now who the Minister is so far as this vote is concerned, because we have got the pleasure of being answered by the Minister of Agriculture, while on page 10, Irrigation, is shown as coming under the Minister of Justice. We ought to have some system by which, when we get a vote which is an absolutely separate and distinct vote like this of irrigation is, which to-day is under one Minister and to-morrow is under another, we can discuss in full the policy of the particular department which forms the separate vote. That, I think, will be a matter for the Standing Rules and Orders Committee. Perhaps the Minister will be good enough to tell us who is really the Minister in charge of irrigation.

I may just reply to the right hon. the member for Fort Beaufort (Sir Thomas Smartt) in reference to this question of the upper and the lower owners. I am busy drawing up legislation now which, I hope, will come before Parliament early next year. This question has been waiting for the last fourteen years, and we might as well wait for another nine months. I, therefore, hope that the hon. member will not press this question. It is impossible to do anything this year. The hon. member for Rondebosch (Mr. Close) has pointed out the difficulties. I quite agree with him that we would like to make as little costs as possible. With reference to the point as to the Minister of Justice, that must be a misprint on page 36.

The Minister said that we had waited 14 years to settle this question of the riparian owners. I grant him that. We have been squabbling about this subject for more than 14 years, but our point is that the upper and lower owners had at last come to some measure of agreement, the nearest approach to agreement that we have ever had. It was not entirely satisfactory to either side, but it was a compromise which all of them were prepared to accept and that psychological moment had been allowed to slip.

I am sorry I must rule the hon. member out but that matter requires legislation.

I only want to ask the Minister whether he knows that already the disruptive elements have started and that these owners are already beginning to diverge again.

These farmers now are not following the advice the department gave to these farmers. On account of my hon. friend not following the advice his own department gave to the Irrigation Commission they now come under the purview of the judge whose salary we are voting at the present time, with the result that they will lose thousands of pounds, whereas all the farmers representing upper, lower and intermediate, for the purpose of saving that loss of money and especially with their eye on Grass Ridge and Lake Arthur and to make it unnecessary for these people to go into court, had come to this agreement. I say as an irrigator, and speaking for other irrigators, it is an extremely grave thing that in a matter of this sort my hon. friend says we can wait another year, as we have already waited fourteen years. There was another measure before this House which had waited several years, but we were told it was of such pressing importance that it could not wait any longer, but when it comes to a matter like this, where the vital interests of farmers are concerned, my hon. friend says there is not time to deal with it. These people to protect their interests, must take certain steps which have cost thousands of pounds.

Vote put and agreed to.

On Vote 37, “Public Service Commission,” £26,473,

I move—

No, let us go on.

I would appeal to the Prime Minister. It is twenty minutes to eleven and this is Friday night.

No, we have still twenty minutes.

The Prime Minister is not prepared to meet us. Then I can assure the Prime Minister he is not going to gain any time by his churlish attitude.

I want to raise, on this vote, a question on the recent reorganization that the Commission has brought about in regard to the salary of women typistes. They have brought into force certain new scales which seem to me, in some respects, to reduce the position of some of these grades to an undue extent, particularly in regard to typists who are not qualified in shorthand. The old scale allowed women who were typists but not qualified in shorthand, to rise in the first grade up to a maximum of £220, and the second grade rose to £150. The new scales only allow for one grade for women who are typists but not shorthand-typistes, and that grade stops at £140. I think the Minister will give this matter his consideration. He will see that a salary of £140 as the maximum for women who have to earn their living as typistes, is unduly low. Under the old scales a certain bonus was given to these shorthand-typistes if they were bilingual, with which I entirely agree; but what is done now is that there are two classes in each grade, according to whether the officer is bilingual or not, and where bilingual qualifications exist, the salary, of course, is higher. But comparing the new scales with the old ones, what has been done is to reduce the maximum where a typiste is not bilingual, and increase it slightly where a typiste is bilingual. The trouble is, when a woman qualifies as a bilingual shorthand-typiste, she is not put on the bilingual scale, but has to wait until there is a vacancy in that scale, apparently. I should have thought that she would automatically have gone on the bilingual scale, because there is a scarcity of qualified bilingual shorthand-typistes. Another point in the new scales is that there is a special scale provided for supervisors—that is, where a woman has a number of others under her,— and that scale begins only to take effect where she is supervising at least eight. I think the number ought to be brought down, because to supervise eight means a very considerable addition to the ordinary duties. I would like the Minister to look into these matters, because the salaries are not adequate, as they are, to support these shorthand-typistes. I would like the Minister to see whether these scales cannot be modified.

This is the only opportunity I have of raising a matter which has come before the Public Service Commission, and which I consider constitutes a hardship on a particular member of the service. I would like to know what can be done, not only in this case, but to have a ruling from the Minister what can be done should similar cases occur. This is an official in the postal department, and he has tried all departmental measures to obtain a remedy. He was ordered to be transferred from Port Nolloth to Wynberg, and in passing through a flooded river the post motor 12 miles from Vanrhynsdorp broke down in the middle of the stream, and the result was the personal belongings he had were damaged by the water. It has been the custom should a man sustain a misfortune of that kind, to be reimbursed the amount of his loss. The Postmaster-General was perfectly satisfied as to the amount of the claim, which was £20 and £2 2s. the attorney’s fee. Eventually the Public Service Commission turned the claim down because it was not satisfied that the amount was reasonable, so the unfortunate man received nothing although he had reduced his claim from £27 5s. Apparently the suggestion is that subsequent to damage and prior to examination the man should have had his clothing laundered or renovated. This was impracticable. I am bringing the matter forward at the request of the Postal and Telegraph Association which is of opinion that a very important principle is involved.

On the motion of the Minister of the Interior it was agreed to report progress and ask leave to sit again.

House Resumed:

Progress reported; House to resume in committee on 6th June.

announced that the Committee on Standing Rules and Orders had discharged Mr. Hugo from service on the Select Committee on the South African Nationality and Flag Bill and appointed Mr. Wessels in his stead.